Global Policy Forum

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

The Libyan double agent considered the most crucial witness in the Lockerbie trial testified today that the two defendants brought a brown Samsonite suitcase to Malta like the one believed to contain the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

But if the prosecution was anchoring its case on the witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, as it had indicated, it may have been disappointed. He never said he saw a bomb put in the suitcase or the suitcase put aboard a flight. Nor did he say that either defendant made any admission to him about the bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 that killed 270 people.

Mr. Abdul Majid, who became an informant for the C.I.A. just four months before the bombing, spent only half a day testifying, mostly before the prosecution. He will resume testifying, under defense questioning, on Wednesday. "I think it's all over," Robert Black, a University of Edinburgh law professor who has closely followed the trial, said of the prosecution's case. "They didn't get the damaging evidence, the actual smoking gun. They needed him to say 'I saw them putting the bomb in the suitcase.'"

Scottish prosecutors do not outline their cases in opening statements and do not update the press on how they are doing, so it is difficult to tell what they hope to accomplish with each witness. But the British press was once full of speculation that Mr. Abdul Majid, as a former intelligence agent, would firmly link the two accused to the bomb plot.

The trial, which began in May, is taking place in the Netherlands under Scottish law, under a deal worked out with the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who agreed to surrender the two defendants only if they would not be tried in Britain or the United States.

Mr. Abdul Majid, who at the time of the bombing was the deputy station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at the Malta airport, said today that he had discovered that his desk's drawers contained 25 pounds of TNT.

He said his boss, the defendant Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who shared the desk and kept the key, told him it had been given to him by the chief of airline security, who is the second defendant accused of blowing up Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al- Megrahi. Mr. Fhimah and Mr. Megrahi, both Libyans, have denied the charges against them. The purpose of the TNT was never explained; Pan Am 103 was not blown up with TNT.

Mr. Abdul Majid also testified that in 1986, shortly after American jets based in Britain bombed Libya, he wrote a report saying it would be possible to slip an unaccompanied suitcase aboard a British plane at the airport where he worked. Mr. Megrahi found out about the report, Mr. Abdul Majid testified, and cautioned him, "Don't rush things."

It became clear today that Mr. Abdul Majid was not a high-level operative. He said he joined Libya's secret service in 1983 as an auto mechanic, resigned two years later and was rehired as a file clerk. Even at the Malta airport, despite his "deputy station manager" title, he spent his time checking passenger lists and helping Libyan V.I.P.'s clear customs.

He did have one conversation about the bombing with Mr. Fhimah in 1991, he testified. In it, Mr. Fhimah angrily denounced America for bombing Libya in 1986, and said, "They never looked at the possibility of a reaction," Mr. Abdul Majid recalled. But he said nothing clearly indicating that he had bombed Pan Am 103. Mr. Fhimah never even admitted being an intelligence agent, Mr. Abdul Majid said.

One lingering mystery was not explored today: if Mr. Abdul Majid, as he testified, became a turncoat by walking into the United States Embassy in Malta in August 1988, four months before the bombing, why did he not tip anyone off about it? Even if he had not known in time to thwart it, why did American and Scottish investigators spend a whole year thinking their chief suspects were a group of Syrian-backed Palestinians in Germany?

Mr. Abdul Majid's testimony was considered the prosecution's best chance to link the two defendants to the bomb itself. Other witnesses have established that the two were in Malta when the bomb was put on a Malta Air flight that connected to Pan Am 103, and that Mr. Megrahi had in earlier years bought Swiss bomb timers.

Another witness, a Malta clothing store owner, was asked to confirm that Mr. Fhimah had bought clothes that were later found, singed, in the plane's debris, but his identification, 12 years after the sale, seemed shaky. Because he has been given a new identity in the United States federal witness protection program, Mr. Abdul Majid's face was not seen today except in the court itself. A white screen covered the glass wall of the public gallery, and the closed circuit TV carrying the trial reduced his face to a jumble of black and yellow squares. His voice was electronically distorted until it sounded like Darth Vader speaking Arabic slowly. Speaking on condition of anonymity, someone who saw him said he wore a gray suit, was not masked and has "Pavarotti-like jowls."

Published reports have said he is so afraid of being assassinated that he agreed to meet prosecutors recently only on a moving bus while wearing what was described as "a Shirley Bassey wig." Mr. Abdul Majid's testimony was supposed to begin last month, but the defense and prosecution fell into a dispute over 25 C.I.A. cables about interviews with him between August 1988 and 1991, when he was spirited aboard a United States warship off Malta and given asylum.

The defense was given copies with whole pages blacked out; the C.I.A. claimed those parts would jeopardize American security. After the defense protested and the court agreed, the agency handed over less edited transcripts and 36 more cables. Those gave the defense a wealth of material for attacking Mr. Abdul Majid's credibility. Apparently, after he was hired but before he emerged in the bomb case, his C.I.A. debriefers — one of whom worked undercover as a baggage handler — became worried that he was an opportunist and possibly a fraud.

He approached the United States Embassy in August 1988 out of fear, he testified today. He had been ordered back to Tripoli to explain an incident in July. He said Mr. Fhimah, his boss, had made what was interpreted as a sexual advance on an 18-year-old woman passenger, an Egyptian who turned out to be a very angry relative of the late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Rather than be recalled to Libya for questioning, Mr. Abdul Majid wanted to defect to America. But the agency asked him to become a double agent and paid him $1,000 a month, hoping he could penetrate upper levels of the secret service in Libya. He also asked the C.I.A. to pay for sham surgery on his arm that would leave a scar and to provide certification that he was unfit for military duty.

Today he said the agency helped pay for a $2,000 operation, explaining that his doctor broke his arm and had it treated at a Malta hospital. He also asked for a $30,000 loan to start a car rental agency in Malta. Defense lawyers have said the C.I.A. thought he had another $30,000 that he might have made by using his job for low- level smuggling.

By 1990, the agency was considering cutting him off. He had little information and the arm surgery also made him ineligible for intelligence agency service, which his handlers then suspected had been his real reason all along. This afternoon, William Taylor, a defense lawyer, lashed into him on cross-examination, beginning by asking "You aren't required to be very bright to mend cars, are you?" and demanding when the witness got confused, "Would you agree with the statement that a liar has to have an excellent memory?"