Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.
Pan Am Flight 103
 The remains of the forward section from Clipper Maid of the Seas on Tundergarth Hill | |
| Bombing | |
|---|---|
| Date | 21 December 1988 |
| Summary | Terrorist bombing |
| Site | Lockerbie, Scotland 55°06′56″N 003°21′31″W / 55.11556°N 3.35861°W |
| Total fatalities | 270 |
| Aircraft | |
 N739PA, the aircraft involved in the bombing as Clipper Morning Light at San Francisco International Airport in 1978 | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 747-121 |
| Aircraft name | Clipper Maid of the Seas |
| Operator | Pan American World Airways |
| IATA flight No. | PA103 |
| ICAO flight No. | PAA103 |
| Call sign | CLIPPER 103 |
| Registration | N739PA |
| Flight origin | Frankfurt Airport, Frankfurt, West Germany |
| 1st stopover | Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom |
| 2nd stopover | John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, New York, United States |
| Destination | Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Detroit, Michigan, United States |
| Occupants | 259 |
| Passengers | 243 |
| Crew | 16 |
| Fatalities | 259 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Ground casualties | |
| Ground fatalities | 11 |
Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the Boeing 747 "Clipper Maid of the Seas" was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew aboard.[1] Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, the event, which became known as the Lockerbie bombing, is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.
Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in 1991. After protracted negotiations and United Nations sanctions, in 1999, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands. In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. In 2009, he was released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in 2012 as the only person to be convicted for the attack.
In 2003, Gaddafi accepted Libya's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, and paid over a billion dollars in compensation to the families of the victims, a very unusual outcome for a terrorist bombing. Although Gaddafi maintained that he had never personally given the order for the attack,[2] acceptance of Megrahi's status as a government employee was used to connect responsibility by Libya with a series of requirements laid out by a UN resolution for sanctions against Libya to be lifted.[3] In 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War, former Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil said that Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing.[2]
As all the accomplices required for such a complex operation were never identified, or convicted, many conspiracy theories have swirled, such as East German Stasi agents having a possible role in the attack. Some relatives of the dead, including Lockerbie campaigner Jim Swire, believe the bomb was planted at Heathrow Airport, possibly by a sleeper cell belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, which had been operating in West Germany in the months before the Pan Am bombing, and not sent via feeder flights from Malta, as suggested by the US and UK governments.[4]
In 2020, US authorities indicted the Tunisian resident and Libyan national Abu Agila Masud, who was 37 years old at the time of the incident,[5] for participating in the bombing. He was taken into custody in 2022,[6] pleading not guilty in 2023.[7] A federal trial is set for 2025.[8]
- ^ "Clipper Maid of the Seas: Remembering those on flight 103". panamair.org. 2007. Archived from the original on 26 March 2008. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
- ^ a b "Colonel Gaddafi 'ordered Lockerbie bombing'". BBC News. 23 February 2011. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
- ^ "Libya ready to accept responsibility for Lockerbie bombing". The Independent. 13 August 2003. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
- ^ Connolly, Kate; Carrell, Severin (20 March 2019). "Lockerbie investigators 'question former Stasi agents'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
- ^ "US unveils new charges against the suspect in 1988 Lockerbie bombing". The Guardian. 21 December 2020. Archived from the original on 21 December 2020. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
- ^ "Lockerbie bombing suspect in US custody". BBC News. 12 December 2022. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
- ^ "Lockerbie bombing suspect pleads not guilty in US court". BBC News. 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 20 January 2024. Retrieved 22 January 2024.
- ^ Meighan, Craig (21 December 2023). "US sets date for trial against Lockerbie bombing suspect". STV News. Archived from the original on 22 December 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2024.
Previous Page Next Page
