PAN CRESCENT• 407days and 240 witnesses, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Magrahi was
sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 2004, in exchange for a
lifting of UN sanctions, Libya admitted responsibility for atrocity
and paid compensation to the families of the victims.
Initially MI5 had pursued clues that suggested that the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC)
had been responsible, and there was evidence that Iran had paid mil-
lions of dollars to Ahmed Jibril, the leader of the PFLP-GC, to carry
out the bombing. At the time Jibril’s headquarters had been in Syria,
and he was believed to have used Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, leader
of the PFLP-GC European cell, to set up the bombing team, using a
44-year-old Jordanian terrorist, Marwan Khreesat, to make the bomb,
which was smuggled out of a Frankfurt flat by another PFLP-GC ter-
rorist, Ramzi Diab. It was then taken, via Vienna, to Malta, where it
was handled by a PFLP-GC cell operating in a bakery there.
The man who traveled to Malta to purchase the clothes that were
put in the bomb suitcase was identified as Mohammed Abu Talb, who
was later jailed in Sweden for a terrorist bombing. Talb was a known
terrorist who was in Malta at the time the bomb was planted on a
connecting Air Malta flight to Frankfurt, where the suitcase contain-
ing the bomb was transferred to PanAm 103. Surveillance records
showed that Talb owned a brown Samsonite suitcase of the same type
that contained the bomb. He was probably aided by another PFLP-
GC member, Marten Imandi, who not only was in Malta at the same
time but also was linked to the houses in Frankfurt where the bomb
was thought to have been made. See also COUNTERTERRORISM.PAN CRESCENT.In 1947 theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS)
learned that Zeev Shind, a senior Mossad officer, had arranged the
purchase in New York of the S.S.Pan Crescent, a 4,500-ton ship, to
carry illegal emigrants from Southern Europe toPalestine. The ship
had been docked in Venice for repairs and converted to carry 7,000
passengers prior to picking up refugees in Constantia in the Black
Sea, but on the day she was scheduled to embark a bomb detonated
on the hull.
The sabotage had been authorized in London, planned byDerek
Verschoyleat the SIS station in Rome and carried out byHarold
PerkinsandDavid Smiley. Two hundred Italian workmen were
evacuated and a hold was flooded, but there were no casualties.