THE Lockerbie trial diverted its attention from the Libyan defendants yesterday and began looking at other theories about who may have been responsible for bombing PanAm Flight 103.
In an apparent bid to pre-empt the defence, the prosecution called a former Iranian taxi driver who boarded the flight in Frankfurt but disembarked in London before it exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.
The defence had listed the Iranian, Parviz Taheri, as one of its witnesses to support its theory that Palestinian terrorists blew up the aircraft, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.
Two alleged Libyan intelligence agents, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, are on trial before the special Scottish court hearing the case in the Netherlands.
They are accused of putting a suitcase of explosives on an Air Malta flight that was tagged for transfer to Pan Am Flight 103.
Under prosecution questioning, Taheri testified that his apparent link to the Lockerbie bombing was pure coincidence, saying he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Taheri, who had fled Iran to Europe on a false passport earlier in the 1980s, denied any link to the Palestinian organisations that the defence has implicated in the bombing.
Taheri had come under suspicion at Frankfurt airport by Pan Am employee Irene Reijheus, who said in a statement that Taheri looked ''restless and worried'' and was sweating when he checked in.
But Taheri said the airline employee was ''lying,'' and that he had been ''happy and pleased'' to be on his way to meet his future wife's family. ''I heard that (the plane had crashed) in London and I was amazed,'' he said.
German police interviewed him four days after the bombing when he returned home. They found an address, Sandweg 28, written in a notebook in his belongings where police had found stores of explosives and weapons during an earlier raid.
''It doesn't ring a bell. The only thing I remember in Frankfurt is my old address,'' he said.
When defence lawyer William Taylor asked if he had ever been associated with a Palestinian group, he said he had ''never known an Arab in all my life''.
Taheri, 42, was trained in arms and explosives during two years of military service with the Iranian army.
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