Lockerbie accused were working together claim prosecutors

Prosecutors in the Lockerbie trial have begun to draw their conclusions from hundreds of hours of evidence and are insisting the two Libyan defendants plotted to destroy Pan Am 103.

Alastair Campbell QC says the evidence clearly shows that the accused men worked together to place an unaccompanied bag containing a bomb on board a connecting flight at Malta.

Continuing his final submissions, he stressed that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who deny bombing Flight 103, had been working together and were "constantly in each other's company" in the days leading up to the 1988 tragedy in which 270 people died.

He told the trial at Camp Zeist in Holland: "The evidence demonstrates that there was a plan to attack an aircraft and that that plan was successfully brought to fruition.

"The sending of a bomb in an unaccompanied bag was a method of attack against an aircraft of which everyone in the airline industry was only too well aware."

Fhimah, 44, was a former manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa airport, Malta, and would have known the consequences of placing such a bag on a plane but he used his contacts to help Megrahi, 48, put the bag on board, said Mr Campbell.

The prosecution has also alleged the accused travelled from Tripoli to Malta on the day before the bombing - and Mr Campbell says it can be inferred that the men were carrying bomb components.

Mr Campbell says Fhimah's diary, which was seized from his office in Malta, is a crucial piece of evidence which shows that he obtained Air Malta luggage tags - which prosecutors claim were used to direct the bomb bag onto Pan Am 103.

The case continues.