Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011
THEN
Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London bound for New York explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, at 7:03 p.m., about 38 minutes after takeoff. All 259 people onboard the Boeing 747 are killed, as well 11 people on the ground. Almost three-quarters of the passengers are American. The explosion is caused by a bomb hidden in a radio-cassette player in a piece of luggage stowed in the plane’s cargo hold. Suspicion falls to Islamist terrorists targeting Americans either in retaliation for the 1988 U.S. airstrike on an Iranian passenger plane that was mistaken for a fighter jet (killing all 290 people onboard), or the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya, killing dozens of people including Moammar Gadhafi’s daughter. In 1999, Gadhafi agrees to turn over two suspects in the case to Scotland in exchange for an easing of United Nations sanctions. Four years later, Libya claims responsibility for the bombing and pays compensation to the victim’s families.
NOW
Earlier this month, Alistair Burt, U.K. foreign office minister for the Middle East and North Africa, confirmed that officials of post-Gadhafi Libya will allow British investigators into the country to investigate the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The confirmation came after Burt’s three-day visit to Libya to meet with the country’s interim officials. During Burt’s talks with Libyan officials, both sides emphasized the importance of addressing the Pan Am “legacy” issue in order to further efforts to renew the relationship between the two countries. In 2001, Libyan national Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was convicted of having a “significant part in planning and perpetrating” the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. In 2009, Scotland released Megrahi on compassionate grounds because of terminal cancer so that he could die in Libya with his family. Megrahi is still alive.
