Abu Nidal 'not involved in Lockerbie'

Abu Nidal, the once-feared terrorist who died mysteriously in Baghdad last month, was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing, his group claimed today.

The Fatah-Revolutionary Council denied claims by one of its former officials that Abu Nidal was behind the 1988 bombing that brought down a Pan Am flight over Scotland, killing 270 people.

Atef Abu Bakr, the group’s former spokesman and close aide to Abu Nidal, told the respected London-based Arabic newspaper Al Hayat that Abu Nidal once told a group meeting that his organisation was behind the Lockerbie bombing.

But a Fatah-Revolutionary Command statement published in Al Hayat today said the whole world followed the Lockerbie trial and “the side that was tried and those people sentenced are, for sure, not members of our group.”

A special Scottish court sentenced former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 20 years, for his role in the outrage.

Abu Nidal has been quietly buried in Baghdad in the presence of a few relatives and an Iraqi intelligence officer.

Iraqi intelligence handed over Abu Nidal’s body on Thursday to one of his relatives in Baghdad, said a Fatah-Revolutionary Council statement.

Abu Nidal was buried the same day “in the presence of a handful of his family members, and the participation of an Iraqi intelligence officer to make sure he was buried,” it added.

The statement said Abu Nidal had wanted to be buried in the West Bank town of Nablus “but several Arab and Zionist intelligence agencies prevented that.”

Last month, the head of Iraqi intelligence said Abu Nidal committed suicide rather than face an Iraqi court for allegedly communicating with a foreign country.

Abu Nidal’s group said its leader was assassinated by one of Iraq’s intelligence agencies and asked Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to order an investigation into Abu Nidal’s death.