A U.S. National Security Agency report says the deadly 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was financed by a former Iranian interior minister, according to British news reports Tuesday.
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi paid $10 million in cash and gold to have the bombing carried out, The Times of London and other newspapers quoted the report as saying. They didn't say who Mohtashemi paid.All 259 people on the New York-bound plane and 11 people on the ground were killed in the Dec. 11, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The Guardian quoted the report as saying: "Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. . . . He has recently paid $10 million in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the U.S. shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus."
The United States accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner in July 1988.
The Times identified Mohtashemi as founder of the Lebanese radical group Hezbollah. He was dismissed as Iran's interior minister in 1989 after moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected president.
The Guardian newspaper said the agency's report was written during the 1991 gulf war and was declassified after a Freedom of Information Act request by lawyers representing insurers of the now defunct Pan American airline.