
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 23, 1991                   TAG: 9103230052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Medium

PAN AM BOMB BAG UNOPENED/ SCOTLAND YARD REPORT BLAMES SECURITY LAPSE FOR BLAS

An official inquest concluded Friday that the December 1988 bombing of a Pan American World Airways jet that killed 270 people might have been prevented if the airline had used tighter baggage controls at airports in Frankfurt and London.

The 99-page report by Scotland's Sheriff-Principal, John Mowat, who held three months of hearings in the case, also stated that the quality of Pan Am's security at the time of the bombing was "far below" what the company claimed and that the British Department of Transport had failed to give adequate warnings that dangerous luggage could be transferred undetected from one plane to another.

Mowat drew no conclusions about who planted the bomb, but his report concluded the explosive was in a suitcase that probably was shipped to Frankfurt on a non-Pan Am flight, then transferred to Pan Am flight 103A and sent to London without being identified as an unaccompanied bag.

Under Federal Aviation Administration rules, the bag should have been rejected at Frankfurt or opened and inspected, a procedure that might have uncovered the tape recorder in which several ounces of Semtex explosive were concealed.

A former Pan Am security official testified that he had received verbal permission from an FAA official to use the less-stringent procedure of X-raying such bags to save time during the busy pre-Christmas rush. The FAA official has denied giving such consent.

The bag was X-rayed a second time at Heathrow International Airport in London, but the report said that there again was no attempt to match the luggage to an owner and the bag was transferred to Pan Am flight 103A. The plane exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, while on its way to New York.

Mowat's report called Pan Am's procedure a "defect" that "involved a substantial risk that an unaccompanied bag containing an explosive device would be so transferred."

Lee Kreindler, a New York lawyer who represents relatives of the victims, welcomed the report, saying "it fits with our own evidence," and predicted it would aid the federal lawsuit against Pan Am that is scheduled to go to trial in June in New York.

(In a separate case involving Flight 103, a federal appeals court in New York ruled Friday that crash survivors and the families of those killed are ineligible for punitive damages. The ruling said the international treaty on airline travel does not provide for punitive damages, Reuter reported.)

by CNB