Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Scotland 1988
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 31,000 feet. The
disaster, which became the subject of Britain’s 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-Qaddafi’s 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. government’s 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 didn’t
express remorse. The U.N. and U.S. 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.
(More Events on This Day in History)
-
American Revolution
- 1761 Patriot Robert Barnwell is born
-
Automotive
- 1967 “The Graduate” opens in New York; makes Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider famous
-
Civil War
- 1861 Trent crisis escalates
-
Cold War
- 1991 Soviet republics proclaim the Commonwealth of Independent States
-
Crime
- 1980 Sunny von Bulow is found comatose
- 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland
-
Disaster
- 1946 Earthquake sends tsunami toward Japan
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General Interest
- 1958 De Gaulle elected
- 1968 Apollo 8 departs for moon’s orbit
- 1975 Carlos the Jackal attacks OPEC headquarters
-
Hollywood
- 2001 Russell Crowe stars in A Beautiful Mind
-
Literary
- 1799 William Wordsworth moves into Dove Cottage
- 1996 Curious George co-creator Margret Rey dies
-
Music
- 1985 Harry Chapin earns a #1 hit with “Cat’s In The Cradle”
-
Old West
- 1866 Indians massacre Fetterman and eighty soldiers
-
Presidential
- 1970 Nixon meets Elvis Presley
-
Sports
- 1918 Hobey Baker killed in plane crash
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Vietnam War
- 1969 Thailand announces plans to withdraw troops
- 1972 Defense Department reports eight B-52s lost during Linebacker II
-
World War I
- 1915 Sir William Robertson is appointed chief of the Imperial General Staff
-
World War II
- 1945 “Old Blood and Guts” dies
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