Malta had "no connection" with the bomb that exploded aboard an aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988, Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg told The Sunday Times yesterday.
"The position of the government has never changed on this matter - Malta was not involved in this incident. The bomb never left from Malta," Dr Borg said in the first government reaction since the controversial release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi.
Mr Al-Megrahi returned to Libya on compassionate grounds - he has terminal prostate cancer - last Thursday after being held in a Scottish prison, where he served eight years of a life sentence for the bombing of a Pan Am jet which killed 270 people.
As he arrived in Tripoli to a hero's welcome, sparking outrage in the US and the UK, Mr Al-Megrahi said he had sufficient evidence that would exonerate him from any involvement in the bombing.
In an interview with The Times of London yesterday, Mr Al-Megrahi said: "They believe I'm guilty, which in reality I'm not... One day the truth won't be hiding as it is now. We have an Arab saying: The truth never dies."
The 57-year-old Libyan dropped his second appeal in what some experts have described as smacking of a political deal.
The connection with Malta and subsequently with Mr Al-Megrahi was made when police recovered from the wreckage items of baby clothing bearing the label 'Yorkie' made by a Maltese company. The clothing, traced to a Sliema shop, was found in the suitcase believed to have been carrying the bomb.
Though the courts decided that the bomb left from Malta, another theory was that it had been placed on board a London-bound plane at Frankfurt airport before reaching the Pam Am jet that was bound for New York. Some still believe Iran, and not Libya, was behind the bombing - in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranair flight by an American missile in the summer of 1988, which killed 290.
But Dr Borg said that the withdrawal by Mr Al-Megrahi of the second appeal before the Scottish courts meant that no new light could now be shed on the incident.
Asked if he believed Mr Al-Megrahi was innocent, the Foreign Minister said: "The Scottish Review Court said there were sufficient grounds which could have led to the reopening of the case. Unfortunately this hasn't happened."
Former Air Malta chairman Albert Mizzi and Wilfred Borg, who was ground operations manager at the airport at the time, yesterday also denied there was any Malta connection.
Mr Mizzi said he never believed the bomb was planted in Malta, adding that he is more inclined to believe that the device was planted in Germany.
So is Mr Al-Megrahi innocent?
"Whether he's innocent or not, I cannot say, but all I can tell you is that we had experts like Edgar Mizzi on the case, and they showed that Malta wasn't involved," Mr Mizzi said.
The former Air Malta chairman also knew Mr Al-Megrahi when he was serving as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta.
"He certainly didn't look like the type who would commit such an atrocity, but appearances can be deceiving."
Mr Mizzi maintained that the investigations carried out at the time had dismissed the theory that the bomb was inside unaccompanied luggage which was loaded onto an Air Malta flight. Wilfred Borg, who was Air Malta ground operations manager at the time, said documents for Flight KM180 of December 21, 1988, showed that a total of 39 passengers presented 55 pieces of luggage for check-in.
All 55 pieces of luggage were physically counted and certified as being the only baggage loaded in the holds of the aircraft and no unaccompanied bags were loaded on this flight. The 39 passengers each retrieved their respective luggage at the destination.
Mr Borg, today chief officer of Air Malta's IT Corporate Services, reiterated the airline's contention that the security systems in place at Luqa airport at the time not only met international standards but exceeded those in place at many major airports.
In his autobiography, then Home Affairs Minister Guido de Marco said it seemed highly unrealistic to him at the time that a timing device could have been placed inside unaccompanied baggage that took such a complicated route to get on the plane, since there was so much room for error.
Yet, Prof. de Marco still insisted that a full investigation be carried out by both the Maltese and foreign authorities.
"From my discussions with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd and other officials, no one was putting the blame on Malta. In fact, according to them, neither the airport authorities nor Air Malta were found wanting in their handling of the luggage in question," Prof. de Marco said.
Was there any unaccompanied luggage on Flight KM180?
Wilfred Borg cited four excerpts from the trial court judgment to prove Air Malta's claim that the bomb never left Malta.
• "Evidence showed that there was no passenger on KM180 who had an onward booking from Frankfurt to London or the US and all the passengers on Air Malta retrieved all their checked-in baggage at their destination. The Malta documentation for KM180 does not record that any unaccompanied baggage was carried."
• "If the unaccompanied bag was launched from Luqa, the method by which it was done is not established, and the prosecution accepted it could not point to any specific route by which the primary suitcase could have been loaded."
• "The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 is a major difficulty for the prosecution case, and one which has to be considered along with the rest of the circumstantial evidence."
• "The absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the prosecution case but after taking full account of that difficulty, we remain of the view that the primary suitcase began its journey at Luqa."
hgrech@timesofmalta.com