Cop: U.S. planted evidence in Pan Am bomb

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A retired senior Scottish police officer says that U.S. agents planted crucial evidence in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the Scotsman reports.

The newspaper, citing sources close to the defense team of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, said that the officer approached the lawyers after Megrahi's appeal was rejected in 2002. Megrahi, an alleged Libyan agent, was tried in the Netherlands under Scottish law and convicted of planting a bomb that exploded the jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

"He said he believed he had crucial information," the newspaper quotes a source saying. "A meeting was set up and he gave a statement that supported the long-standing rumors that the key piece of evidence, a fragment of circuit board from a timing device that implicated Libya, had been planted by US agents."

The police officer is described as a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, which would have required him to obtain the rank of at least assistant chief constable before his retirement. The defense sources told The Scotsman that he did not come forward earlier because he did not want to break ranks with colleagues.