Pan Am Flight 103

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PAN AM FLIGHT 103

PAN AM FLIGHT 103, a U.S. passenger jet, was destroyed by a terrorist bomb on 21 December 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 passengers and crew and 11 residents. Among the passengers were thirty-five foreign-study students from Syracuse University. The incident ignited a protracted effort to bring the suspected perpetrators to trial and marked a shift from hijacking to sabotage in terrorism against Western targets. The aircraft

craft was traveling from London's Heathrow Airport to New York when it was destroyed by a plastic explosive hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player that was inside an unaccompanied suitcase apparently transferred from another airline. Relatives of the dead blamed U.S. authorities for failing to make public a warning of a terrorist attack on a flight originating in Frankfurt, Germany. Groups of relatives filed civil litigation against Pan Am, and later against Libya, in U.S. courts.

Early speculation focused on Iran's threat to retaliate for the U.S. downing of an Iranian passenger jet in the Persian Gulf in July 1988, and on a German cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, which was found to be packing plastic explosives into Toshiba radio cassette players. In November 1991, however, the United States and Scotland indicted two Libyans, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Their ostensible motive was revenge for the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986, during which the adopted daughter of Moammar Qadhafi, Libya's leader, was killed. In 1992, for the first time in its history, the United Nations Security Council ordered one country, Libya, to surrender its own nationals to another country. When Libya refused, citing the lack of an extradition treaty with either the U.S. or the U.K., the Security Council imposed an air, arms, and oil equipment embargo on the country. Libya challenged the Council's actions by bringing still unresolved litigation against both countries in the International Court of Justice.

The Council's sanctions were suspended in April 1999 when Libya voluntarily turned over its two nationals to an ad hoc Scottish Court in the Netherlands. After a nine-month trial, on 31 January 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges found al-Megrahi guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment (20 years minimum) in Scotland; they found Fhimah not guilty. Many relatives of the victims questioned whether the trial adequately answered who had originally ordered the attack and what their motive was. U.S. media were similarly skeptical of the trial's outcome. Megrahi's conviction was upheld on appeal in March 2002, while civil litigation against Libya was pending.