Victims of jet disaster to be released

Press, 28 December 1988, Page 8

Victims of jet disaster to be released

NZPA-AP Lockerbie The first of the dead identified from wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 were to be turned over to relatives today.

The police planned to release five bodies to next-of-kin after the formality of registering the deaths in Lockerbie. Names and nationalities of the dead were not released. One more victim was found yesterday, bringing the total from last Wednesday’s disaster to 240 — 29 short of the projected death toll of 258 on the plane and 11 listed as missing on the ground — the worst aviation accident in British history. A team of civilian and Royal Air Force pathologists and a group of orthodontists were examining the bodies and expected to take another 10 days to complete identifications. Meanwhile, an unidentified 28-year-old man was to appear in Dumfries Sheriff Court today in connection with allegations of looting at the crash. More than 600 rescue workers were still search-

ing for bodies and wreckage over 260 sq km of rugged landscape with dense wood, lakes and bogs. A suspect suitcase and an unspecified amount of wreckage were sent yesterday to the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, Kent, in southern England, “for more detailed examination to determine whether they exhibit evidence of a pre-impact explosion,” Michael Charles, the top British investigator on the scene, said in a statement released by the Transport Department. "The Times” of London reported the suitcase, noticed lying among wreckage, was ripped and torn and might have been damaged by flying metal. The report said the Fort Halstead scientists “should quickly be able to establish whether those marks were made by an exploding bomb.”

Even though no evidence of structural failure had turned up, Mr Charles said that possibility was still being investigated. Structural failure or a bomb have been identified by experts as most likely reasons why the Pan American Airways Boeing 747 jetliner disappeared from radar screens just as it reached cruising altitude of 9455 m over south-west Scotland. “Circumstantial evidence points to a bomb being planted in a suitcase loaded into the forward baggage compartment beneath the flight deck and the first class cabin. This part of the aircraft was ripped away from the main structure of the fuselage,” the “Daily Mail” said, without identifying its sources. The flight originated as a Boeing 727 from Frankfurt, West Germany, with a change of planes at London’s Heathrow Airport.