The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
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The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie is a documentary film on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Produced, written and directed by Allan Francovich and financed by Tiny Rowland, the film was released by Hemar Enterprises in November 1994.
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[edit] Résumé
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie takes a critical look at some of both evidence and witnesses that would eventually figure at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in 2000: the MST–13 timer fragment, Edwin Bollier, Alan Feraday and Dr Thomas Hayes come under particular scrutiny. The CIA's Vincent Cannistraro and the FBI's Thomas Thurman are exposed to strong criticism by colleagues. The film disputes the accusation by Britain and America that Libya was behind the bombing, concluding instead that the bomb was most likely introduced onto the aircraft by an unwitting drug mule, Khaled Jafaar, in a CIA-protected suitcase. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, former prime minister of Iran, lends his weight to the theory that the Lockerbie bombing was in retaliation for the shootdown by the USS Vincennes of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988.
[edit] South African connection
Tiny Rowland was instrumental in the film's surprising revelation of a South African connection to PA 103, which induced the Mandela government's energy minister and former foreign minister of apartheid South Africa, Pik Botha, to deny in November 1994 he had any foreknowledge of the Lockerbie bomb (see Alternative theories into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103).
[edit] Legal challenge
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie was to have been shown at the London Film Festival in 1994 but was withdrawn at the last minute because of the threat of a libel action by a U.S. official mentioned in the film (believed to have been Michael Hurley of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)). Instead, Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, arranged for the film to be screened in the House of Commons on November 16, 1994. Other scheduled screenings at students' unions in the University of Birmingham and the University of Warwick were pulled, as was a showing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London – all for legal reasons.
[edit] Broadcast in Britain
The UK's Channel 4 television finally broadcast the film on May 11, 1995. Shortly after the broadcast, one of the characters in the film, Yuval Aviv, was indicted on fraud charges. Aviv claimed the charges were trumped-up and they were, in due course, dropped.
Because of hostility by lawyers and by relatives of PA 103's U.S. victims, the film has never been shown on television or in movie theaters in America.
