Brainwa****ng the m***** to start a war with Iran, and to point the evidence
away from Israel.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Lockerbie-story-heads-to-Hollywood.3616402.jp
Lockerbie story heads to Hollywood
By Marc Horne
HE IS already responsible for one Hollywood blockbuster. Now a former
Israeli secret agent is
planning to turn the Lockerbie disaster into a big screen hit, blaming
Iran, not Libya, for the
atrocity.
Juval Aviv was behind the book that inspired the acclaimed Steven
Spielberg blockbuster Munich.
His latest project is a fictional account of the Lockerbie disaster – in
which 270 people were
killed – and he hopes that the Jaws and ET filmmaker can make it into a
major movie.
Flight 103 – which alleges that the Iranians and the American secret
services were complicit in
the atrocity – will be published early in the new year. The book is
expected to become an
international bestseller, and the former Mossad agent has revealed he is
in talks with a number
of high-profile Hollywood directors over the film rights.
Among those considering adapting the script is Spielberg – the author's
friend and former
collaborator. The legendary director hired Aviv as a consultant for his
award-winning 2005 film
Munich, which depicted a campaign by Israel, in the wake of the 1972
Olympic massacre, to hunt
down and kill alleged Palestinian terrorists.
Speaking from New York 19 years on from the disaster, Aviv said: "I
believe the book will have
an impact around the world because what happened over Lockerbie that day
affected so many
people in so many countries, and continues to do so.
"It's a powerful story that will make a fantastic movie. Some very
high-profile directors in
Hollywood have seen the book and are very interested.
"Nothing has been signed yet, but I am very optimistic that a deal will be
done."
The former major in the Israeli Defence Force believes that Spielberg
would be the ideal man to
bring his vision to the big screen.
"Steven is looking at the book right now. I worked closely with him on
Munich and he is someone
whom I admire greatly. My initial fear was that Munich could become little
more than a Jewish
James Bond movie. But Steven created a thought-provoking political movie,
which showed the
heavy toll that the assignment took on the agents who participated."
Aviv, who acted as lead investigator for Pan Am during the Lockerbie
inquiry, admits that his
book is a thinly veiled account of what he is convinced really happened in
December 1988.
In the novel, retired Israeli agent Sam Woolfman discovers that Tehran
ordered the destruction
of an American plane in retaliation for the US downing an Iranian airbus,
carrying 133 civilian
partners, earlier in 1988.
The Iranians then enlist an experienced Palestinian terrorist; Ahmed 'The
Falcon' Shabaan, to
carry out the bloody reprisal.
In the book, the American secret services turn a blind eye to the plot and
ensure that three
CIA agents, who are due to blow this whistle on a internal heroin dealing
racket, are aboard
the doomed eponymous flight.
Woolfman, accompanied by his glamorous young Irish sidekick Orla Sheehy,
discover that American
Embassy staff around the world were warned not to board the Pan Am
airliner.
The suggestion that Libya was not responsible for the atrocity was made
forcibly by Aviv, who
writes under the nom de plume of Sam Green, during the inquiry, but his
evidence was rejected.
With a second appeal under way by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the
Libyan convicted for
the Lockerbie bombing, the president of investigations firm Interfor is
convinced that his
version of events will finally be vindicated.
He said: "Flight 103 is written as fiction, but it is based solidly on
real-life facts. The US
Government urged me to change my re****t (to the inquiry], but I wouldn't
and I fully stand by
my version of events.
"I think 2008 will be the year when the truth finally emerges. There is
still an innocent
person in jail, but hopefully not for much longer."
An earlier appeal by Megrahi in 2002 upheld his life sentence and rejected
claims of a
miscarriage of justice.
However, screenwriter and film journalist Beth White was unsure if the
public was ready for a
Lockerbie movie.
She said: "I'm not sure that enough time has passed, but it would
certainly attract a huge
amount of interest.
"I remember watching a French dramatisation of the events leading up to
September 11 not long
after it took place and being horrified.
"But in so
me cir***stances, turning real events into entertainment can be justified
as it can spark debate."
One industry insider suggested that Harrison Ford would be ideal in the
role of the rugged,
retired secret agent Woolfman.
He said: "Harrison has already played a similar character in Patriot Games
where he was Jack
Ryan, a CIA agent who becomes embroiled in a terrorist plot.
"I could see Kelly Macdonald playing Orla, his dark-haired young Celtic
assistant."
The Lockerbie disaster has featured in Ian Rankin's Rebus adventure A
Question Of Blood as well
in the novels The Passenger by Chris Petit and Double Shot by Anna Blundy.
But Scotland on Sunday literary editor Stuart Kelly felt many authors
****ed away from the
subject for fear of causing offence.
He said: "There's a patina of fear about writing about it."
Flight 103 by Sam Green is published by Century on January 24
The full article contains 879 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday
newspaper.
Last Updated: 22 December 2007 8:01 PM
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