1 After an exhaustive probe into the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland, investigators have concluded there is still a case against two Libyans, Britain said Wednesday.
2 Responding to a lawmaker's questions in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said investigators had found nothing to implicate anyone else in the attack, which killed 270 people.
3 'During the early stages of the investigation, the possibility that Palestinian extremist groups might be responsible was extensively investigated and so were reports of Iranian involvement,' Hurd said.
4 But 'no credible evidence has been found to substantiate either theory,' he said.
5 Hurd revealed that as part of their investigations, Scottish police had interviewed two members of the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hafes Dalkamouni and Abdel Ghadanfar, who were arrested in Germany in 1988.
6 He added that a report from the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Agency suggesting Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi paid for the bombing was unreliable. Mohtashemi was interior minister at the time of the bombing.
7 The 'untried' source of the document was an Iranian defector who was 'reporting second or third hand information,' Hurd told lawmakers.
8 'When the document . was assessed, as a U.S. government spokesman made clear last week, it was discarded as a dud,' he said.
9 Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground. Investigators uncovered links to Libyans in Frankfurt, Germany, the plane's last stop before London.
10 The U.N. Security Council has imposed trade and travel bans on Libya for rejecting British and American demands to extradite the two Libyan intelligence agents, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.
11 'The case against them stands,' Hurd told lawmakers. 'It a case put together after the most massive investigation ever to take place in respect of any crime in Britain.'
12 Hurd said the possibility that the pair would be surrendered for trial had sometimes seemed 'very close' during British discussions with Libya.
13 'We have had all kinds of side proposals which, I fear, are designed to prolong delay and throw dust in the eyes of all concerned,' he said.
14 'But I do not think we should despair about it. I would be very reluctant, and I am sure the Lord Advocate (Scotland's chief legal officer) just as much so, ever to say: `We give this up.''
15 The two Libyans say they will not get a fair trial overseas.

After an exhaustive probe into the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland , investigators have concluded there is still a case against two Libyans , Britain said Wednesday .
still a case against
Why can't they be cleared?