Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Scotland
On this day in 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie Scotland killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard as well as 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground.A bomb hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31000 feet.The disaster which became the subject of Britains largest criminal investigation was believed to be an attack against the United States.
One hundred eighty nine of the victims were American.Islamic terrorists were accused of planting the bomb on the plane while it was at the airport in Frankfurt Germany.Authorities suspected the attack was in retaliation for either the 1986 U.S.air strikes against Libya in which leader Muammar al-Qaddafis young daughter was killed along with dozens of other people or a 1988 incident in which the U.S.
mistakenly shot down an Iran Air commercial flight over the Persian Gulf killing 290 people.Sixteen days before the explosion over Lockerbie the U.S.embassy in Helsinki Finland received a call warning that a bomb would be placed on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt.There is controversy over how seriously the U.S.
took the threat and whether travelers should have been alerted but officials later said that the connection between the call and the bomb was coincidental.In 1991 following a joint investigation by the British authorities and the F.B.I.Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were indicted for murder however Libya refused to hand over the suspects to the U.S.Finally in 1999 in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against his country Qaddafi agreed to turn over the two men to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors.
In early 2001 al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and Fhimah was acquitted.Over the U.S.governments objections Al-Megrahi was freed and returned to Libya in August 2009 after doctors determined that he had only months to live.In 2003 Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing but didnt express remorse.
The U.N.and U.S.lifted sanctions against Libya and Libya agreed to pay each victims family approximately 8 million in restitution.
In 2004 Libyas prime minister said that the deal was the price for peace implying that his country only took responsibility to get the sanctions lifted a statement that infuriated the victims families.Pan Am Airlines which went bankrupt three years after the bombing sued Libya and later received a 30 million settlement.
