Today in History: Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Scotland
In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, but didn’t express remorse.
On this day in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded in mid-air 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 9 448,8m. The disaster, which became the subject of Britain’s largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against the United States. One-hundred-and-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 US air strikes against Libya, in which leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s young daughter was killed along with dozens of other people, or a 1988 incident, in which the US mistakenly shot down an Iran Air commercial flight over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people.
In 1991, following a joint investigation by the British authorities and the FBI, 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 US. 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 US government’s objections, Al-Megrahi was freed and returned to Libya in August 2009 after doctors determined that he had only months to live.
The UN and US lifted sanctions against Libya and Libya agreed to pay each victim’s family approximately $8 million in restitution. In 2004, Libya’s 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.
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