Group That Claimed Jet Bombing Warns of New Action

LONDON —  A caller claiming to represent the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the pro-Iranian group that last week claimed responsibility for the bombing of Pan American World Airways Flight 103, telephoned American news agencies here Friday and threatened more action unless the United States deports the son of the late Shah of Iran.

The anonymous male caller, who spoke with a Middle Eastern accent, repeated the claim that the group he represents blew up the jumbo jet that killed all 259 people aboard and perhaps another 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. He said if Prince Reza Pahlavi, the shah’s son, is allowed to continue to live in the United States then “there will be another present in the New Year for America.”

Pahlavi, 28, lives at an estate in Virginia, just outside Washington. Iranian authorities have appeared uneasy about what they say is a campaign by Pahlavi to try to spark an overthrow of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader.

However, intelligence officials discounted the caller’s claims, the Times of London reported Friday.

“This group is known to have carried out two bombing incidents, but they were both against Iranian dissidents,” the paper quoted an intelligence source as saying.

In a report today, the newspaper said the team investigating the Dec. 21 crash told Scottish police that they are now certain that the bomb was placed on board in Frankfurt, West Germany, where it said a Palestinian terrorist cell had been operating for the past 18 months. Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt.

The paper earlier reported that investigators were also looking into the possibility that a sophisticated device with two separate detonating systems was used to trigger the bomb.

“The double-detonator theory has increased suspicion about the involvement of the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command), a Palestinian group led by Ahmed Jibril that has been noted in the past for using barometric devices against aircraft,” the paper said.

A spokesman for the pro-Syrian group denied Friday that it was involved in the bombing.

“Our front opposes such kind of operations, which target innocent civilians,” PFLP-GC official Talal Naji said in a statement issued in Damascus, Syria.

At the same time, Israel condemned as “repugnant libel” an Egyptian newspaper’s claim that its secret service, the Mossad, was responsible for the bombing.

Another group cited as possibly being behind the bombing--the U.S.-based Jewish Defense League--also denied involvement.

At a Los Angeles news conference, JDL national director Irv Rubin reacted angrily to a report that his group had been included by a U.S. government source close to the Pan Am probe in a list of four groups likely to be regarded as suspects if terrorism is found to be the motive for the bombing.

“It would be a cold day in hell before we would kill Americans,” said Rubin, who attributed the JDL’s inclusion to an attempt to “balance” the list of suspects.

The others named were Abu Nidal’s Revolutionary Council of Fatah, the PFLP-GC and the Palestine Liberation Front. In citing the groups, one knowledgeable official in Washington noted that they share one trait: opposition to any diplomatic solution to the Palestinian problem that could result from U.S. talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Suspicion has fallen on an orange-colored plastic explosive called Semtex, which is made in Czechoslovakia.

Authorities in Prague on Friday offered to send a group of experts to London to help in the investigation and denied that Czechoslovakia provided explosives to terrorists.

Terrorism experts have said that Syria and Libya obtained Semtex from Czechoslovakia and passed it on to surrogate terrorist groups.