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| The official report of the ], , reported there were no indications that the crew had reacted to the rapid decompression or loss of control, though the aircraft's oxygen masks had descended. | The official report of the ], , reported there were no indications that the crew had reacted to the rapid decompression or loss of control, though the aircraft's oxygen masks had descended. | ||
| The nerve center of a 747, from which all the navigation and communication systems are controlled, sits two floors below the cockpit, separated from the forward cargo hold only by a bulkhead wall. |
The nerve center of a 747, from which all the navigation and communication systems are controlled, sits two floors below the cockpit, separated from the forward cargo hold only by a bulkhead wall. See here for an article about the position of the nerve center in a 747 http://www.newsday.com/news/nytwa96-jet07lavi,0,3162765 Investigators believe the force of the explosion broke through this bulkhead wall and shook the flight control cables, causing the aircraft to begin to roll, pitch and yaw. These sudden, violent movements snapped the reinforcing belt that secured the row of windows on the left side, and the cockpit and forward section began to break away. At the same time, shock waves from the blast that hit the fuselage ricocheted back in the direction of the bomb, meeting pulses still coming from the center of the explosion. This produced Mach stem shock waves, which rebounded from one side of the aircraft to the other, running down the length of the fuselage and causing it to split open, as the nose and forward section finally broke away, spilling passengers and flight attendants into the night sky. | ||
| The main section of the fuselage continued flying forward until it reached 19,000 feet, when its dive became almost vertical. The pilots and one flight attendant were found inside the cockpit where it landed in a field by a tiny church in the Scottish village of Tundergarth. The flight attendant was still alive when found by a farmer's wife but died before her rescuer could summon help. | The main section of the fuselage continued flying forward until it reached 19,000 feet, when its dive became almost vertical. The pilots and one flight attendant were found inside the cockpit where it landed in a field by a tiny church in the Scottish village of Tundergarth. The flight attendant was still alive when found by a farmer's wife but died before her rescuer could summon help. | ||
Revision as of 20:23, 10 November 2004
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan Am's regular Frankfurt-London-New York flight. On December 21, 1988, it was the target of a horrific terrorist bombing which killed 270 people. The attack became known as the Lockerbie air disaster in the UK, and simply as Pan Am 103 in the United States.
PA103 originated at Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, in Germany, for the leg to Heathrow Airport in England. Passengers changed aircraft there and the flight continued on to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the United States. On the night of the attack, a Boeing 747-121 (N739PA) with the name Maid of the Seas, the 15th 747 ever built by Boeing and delivered to Pan Am in February 1970, was operating the final London-New York leg of the route.
At 19:03 GMT, 38 minutes into the flight and only minutes after the aircraft had entered Scottish airspace at a cruising altitude of 30,000 ft, the detonation of just 12 ounces of Semtex in the forward cargo hold (Section 41) caused a catastrophic systems and structural failure, triggering a sequence of events that led to the destruction of the aircraft. Investigators reported that within three seconds of the bomb exploding the nose of the aircraft had separated from the main section of the fuselage.
All 259 passengers and crew died, 189 of them Americans. Another 11 people on the ground were killed when the fuel-laden wings hit the ground and exploded, leaving a giant crater where several houses had stood, and damaging 21 others so badly they had to be demolished. Investigators searching for the left wing, which was never found, eventually realized it had disappeared in the fireball on Sherwood Cresent. Debris was scattered over an area of 130 kms. It was the worst act of terrorism against the United States until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The official report of the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch, (see here), reported there were no indications that the crew had reacted to the rapid decompression or loss of control, though the aircraft's oxygen masks had descended.
The nerve center of a 747, from which all the navigation and communication systems are controlled, sits two floors below the cockpit, separated from the forward cargo hold only by a bulkhead wall. See here for an article about the position of the nerve center in a 747 http://www.newsday.com/news/nytwa96-jet07lavi,0,3162765 Investigators believe the force of the explosion broke through this bulkhead wall and shook the flight control cables, causing the aircraft to begin to roll, pitch and yaw. These sudden, violent movements snapped the reinforcing belt that secured the row of windows on the left side, and the cockpit and forward section began to break away. At the same time, shock waves from the blast that hit the fuselage ricocheted back in the direction of the bomb, meeting pulses still coming from the center of the explosion. This produced Mach stem shock waves, which rebounded from one side of the aircraft to the other, running down the length of the fuselage and causing it to split open, as the nose and forward section finally broke away, spilling passengers and flight attendants into the night sky.
The main section of the fuselage continued flying forward until it reached 19,000 feet, when its dive became almost vertical. The pilots and one flight attendant were found inside the cockpit where it landed in a field by a tiny church in the Scottish village of Tundergarth. The flight attendant was still alive when found by a farmer's wife but died before her rescuer could summon help.
For several years, investigators wondered whether an insider had been involved in the terrorist plot, because the relatively small explosion would not have led to the destruction of the plane had it been placed anywhere else. It was eventually concluded that the terrorists could have not planted the bomb so precisely and that it was simply a matter of dreadful luck for the passengers that the bomb suitcase ended up where it did.
The bomb
It was later concluded that the hard-sided Samsonite suitcase containing the explosive had been unaccompanied baggage in the cargo hold of an earlier Air Malta flight to Frankfurt where it was loaded onto the first leg of PA103. It was transferred between planes again at Heathrow for the London-New York leg of the flight.
The improvised explosive device (IED) consisted of 10-14 ounces of Semtex, a battery and an electronic timing device concealed within a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder. It was established during the subsequent trial that one of the accused bought the timer just weeks before the bombing from a Swiss timer manufacturer, Edwin Bollier of the company MEBO.
It is possible the terrorists intended the plane to explode over the Irish Sea and had timed the IED to be detonated accordingly, but due to heavy winds that night, PA103 was delayed for 30 minutes then flew north over Scotland, instead of on its usual western route over Ireland.
Trial in the Scottish Court in the Netherlands
Two Libyan intelligence officers were indicted in 1991 for their role in the attack. They were the former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, Abd al-Basset Ali Mohammad al-Megrahi, and his assisant Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. In 1998, as several Arab and African countries began to ignore the UN’s Lockerbie-related economic sanctions, the Libyan government conceded to a trial in a neutral country and Colonel Gadaffi agreed to the accused being handed over to Scotland for trial on April 5, 1999.
The solution was to try the men in the Netherlands, at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in the former United States Air Force base at Camp Zeist. The area was declared sovereign territory of Scotland governed by Scots Law under a treaty signed by the UK and Dutch governments. The parties finally agreed, and in August 1998, United Nations (UN) sanctions were suspended, though not lifted.
The court site contained a court room, a prison for the accused and offices for press and families of the victims. During the trial the base was guarded by Scottish police officers and prison wardens.
The trial began on May 3, 2000 before three judges, Lords Sutherland, McLean and Coulsfield, without a jury.
Verdicts were reached on January 31, 2001. Abd al-Basset Ali Mohammad al-Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years. Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty and returned home to Libya the next day. An appeal by al-Megrahi was rejected on March 14, 2002 and he was moved to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow, Scotland. He claimed he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and his supporters have labelled him the 271st Lockerbie victim.
The site at Camp Zeist was decommissioned and returned to the Dutch Government.
Subsequent events
There have been calls for a fresh appeal and for al-Megrahi to serve his sentence in a Muslim country. A commission from the Organisation of African Unity criticised the basis of al-Megrahi's conviction. In June 2002 Nelson Mandela showed his sympathy by visiting him in prison.
In October 2002 it was reported that the Libyan government had made a compensation offer of $2.7 billion, about $10 million per victim. Then on August 15, 2003 Libya formally accepted responsibility for the bombing, but the statement consisted of general language that many people felt lacked an expression of remorse for the lives lost. Some people have also charged that the acceptance is a business deal aimed at removing economic sanctions and not a true admission of guilt.
On September 12, 2003, the UN ended its 15-year old sanctions against Libya.
On November 24 2003, as required by European Human Rights law, the Scottish High Court set al-Megrahi's tariff (the length of time he must serve before becoming eligible for parole) at 27 years, backdated to his detention in 1999. Scotland's Lord Advocate Colin Boyd lodged an appeal over the sentence after he was approached by the families of American victims, claiming the sentence was "too lenient."
On 24 February 2004, Libyan Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem stated in an interview broadcast by BBC Radio 4 that his country had only paid the compensation as a "price for peace" and to secure the lifting of UN sanctions. Asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said "I agree with that." He also said there was no evidence to link his country with the April 1984 shooting of police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London.
His comments were retracted by Gadaffi, under intense and immediate pressure from Washington and London.
Speculation and conspiracy theories
Those who believe al-Megrahi is innocent have developed a number of conspiracy theories. Some believe that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal was responsible, though as he was based in Libya for much of the last 20 years, his involvement would not necessarily exonerate Colonel Gadaffi.
Others believe responsibility lies with the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by Ahmed Jibril. It is known that this group was active in the Frankfurt area in October 1988, two months before PA103 was attacked. It is also known that they were hiding IEDs inside household electronic equipment, including at least two Toshiba radio-cassette recorders.
This information is known to Western agencies because one of the bomb-makers, Marwan Khreesat, was a Jordanian double-agent, reporting everything the group did back to Jordanian intelligence, who in turn passed the information to the German police and intelligence officers who had the group under surveillance.
Another conspiracy theory suggests that the CIA was cooperating with Syrian drug dealers who were shipping heroin to the U.S. via PA103. The CIA allegedly protected these suitcases and made sure they were not searched, the theory says, in exchange for intelligence on Arab groups in Syria. But one day, terrorists exchanged the drugs for a bomb.
Another version of the theory is that the CIA knew this exchange had been made, but let it happen, because the CIA protection of the suitcases was a rogue operation, and there were American intelligence officers on PA103 who had found out about it and were on their way home to Washington to tell their superiors.
Much is made of rumors that heroin was allegedly found in the fields around Lockerbie. However, had heroin been switched for a bomb, it would not have arrived in Lockerbie, so the discovery of drugs near the crash site does not support the protected-suitcase theory.
The first version of the heroin story was put forward by Juval Aviv, the owner of Interfor Inc., a private investigation company in New York. Aviv claims to be a former Mossad officer who led the so-called Hand of God team of Israeli assassins that killed several Palestinians believed responsible for the 1972 attack on the Olympic Village. Aviv was employed by Pan Am as a consultant after the bombing and submitted a report to the airline, the so-called Interfor Report, blaming a CIA-protected drugs route. This scenario provided Pan Am with a defense against claims for compensation from relatives, because if the United States government had helped the bomb bypass Pan Am's security, then the airline could not be blamed. However, a court in New York rejected the conclusions of the Interfor Report and Pan Am was held liable.
The protected-suitcase theory was later supported by Lester Coleman, a self-proclaimed former freelance journalist turned minor DEA/DIA (Drug Enforcement Administration/Defence Intelligence Agency) informant in Cyprus, who claimed to have seen one of the PA103 passengers in a DEA office. Coleman subsequently turned his story into a book called ‘’Trail of the Octopus." No evidence has been put forward to support his claims.
Two known motives
What is known is that there were two clear possible motives for the attack on PA103. The first was the American bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1985, during which a little girl Colonel Gadaffi and his wife had adopted was killed. The second was the July 1988 downing in the Gulf, by the USS Vincennes, of Iranair 655, a passenger jet the American warship incorrectly identified as a hostile military aircraft.
It may never be known whether either of these incidents prompted the bombing, or whether it was both, with Libyan and Iranian-paid agents working in concert, or with one group handing the job over to another when the Germans rounded up the PFLP-GC members near Frankfurt.
Some CIA officers who worked on the investigation have told reporters they believe the PFLP-GC planned the attack, then handed it over to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the German arrests meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other investigators believe there were parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed.
Many Lockerbie-watchers found it revealing that the Americans began to shift blame to Libya only after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. America needed Syrian support for the ] Gulf War, the theory goes, and therefore did not want to blame a Syrian-based Palestinian terrorist group. For this reason, it is alleged, Colonel Gadaffi was a useful patsy.
The theory is naive in two respects. Firstly, although America blamed Libya publicly for the bombing for the first time after August 1990, insiders knew from around October 1989 that the focus of the investigation had turned to Libya. Secondly, it would not necessarily have harmed Syria had a Damascus-based terrorist group been held responsible. These Palestinian groups are based in Syria only in the sense of having their headquarters and press offices there. There is no evidence or suggestion that the Syrian government would have approved of an attack against the United States in response to the American attacks on Libya or Iran.
At Arlington National Cemetery on November 3, 1995 US President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims of the event. There are similar memorials at Dryfesdale Cemetery, outside Lockerbie, and at Syracuse University in New York, which lost 35 students in the blast.
See also
- List of terrorist incidents
- List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
- UTA Flight UT-772
External links
- Air Accident Investigation Board report
- BBC in-depth pages on the trial
- BBC report: Lessons from Lockerbie, ten years later
- Aviation Safety Network summary report
- The Lockerbie Trial - transcripts, images and links to related resources
- A website run by a Libyan student containing further information on the disaster
- Book - The Plane Truth - A private investigator's story that mechanical failure, not terrorism, destroyed PA 103.