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Pan Am Flight 103

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Pan Am Flight 103 "PA103" was a regularly scheduled Pan Am flight, which flew from Frankfurt International Airport in Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany, to Heathrow Airport in London, United Kingdom, where it changed planes, then onto John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, United States.

The Pan Am Flight 103 disaster, also known in Britain as the Lockerbie disaster or the Lockerbie air disaster, was the destruction on Dec. 21, 1988 by a bomb of the aircraft known as the Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747-121, #N739PA, which was flying the London to New York leg of the PA 103 route.

Shortly after 7 p.m. GMT, minutes after the aircraft entered Scottish airspace, an explosion in the forward cargo hold caused a catastrophic systems failure. The cockpit tore away from the rest of the aircraft, spilling all 259 passengers and crew into the night sky. Everyone on board died, 189 of them Americans. A further 11 people on the ground were killed when the fuel-laden left wing hit the ground and exploded, leaving a giant crater where several houses had stood. Debris was scattered over an area of 180 miles. It was the worst act of terrorism against the United States until the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Two Libyan intelligence officers were indicted over the attack in 1991. Colonel Gadaffi of Libyan finally agreed to hand the men over to Scotland for trial in 1999, after years of Lockerbie-related economic sanctions against Libya. One of the intelligence officers, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. The second officer - the former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, Abd al-Basset Ali Mohammad al-Megrahi -- was convicted in 2001 by a Scottish court, after a trial held in the specially constructed Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which Gadaffi had accepted as a neutral venue. Megrahi was tried by three Scottish judges, without a jury, and did not speak in his own defence, which is thought to have harmed his case. He lost his appeal in 2002 and is serving a life sentence in a special apartment-type cell in Barlinnie prison, just outside Glasgow, Scotland. He says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. A small movement has grown up around him, calling him the 271st Lockerbie victim. Despite Megrahi's claims of innocence, Colonel Gadaffi has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to the victims' families.

The bomb

The Scottish trial judges concluded that the hard-sided Samonsite suitcase containing the bomb had originated unaccompanied in the cargo hold of an Air Malta flight; flew from there to Frankfurt where it was loaded onto the first leg of PA 103; was transferred again between planes at Heathrow airport; then was loaded onto the London-NY leg of the flight at Heathrow airport.

The improvised explosive device (IED) contained 312 gram Semtex, a battery and a simple timing device, concealed inside a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder. The Scottish trial judges decided that the Libyan intelligence officer bought the timer just weeks before the bombing from a Swiss timer manufacturer, Edwin Bollier of the company MEBO. It is possible that 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 PA 103 was delayed for 30 minutes, then flew north over Scotland to New York instead of by its usual route.

Explosion

Just 38 minutes into the flight to New York, at 19:03 local time, the bomb exploded in the aircraft's forward cargo hold. The blast tore a small hole in the fuselage and cabin floor, with ejected debris striking the tail planes. The forward fuselage and flight deck separated from the main body. The nose section (Section 41) impacted the No.3 engine, knocking it off its pylon. The remainder of the aircraft disintegrated as it descended.

Speculation and conspiracy theories

Those who believe Megrahi is innocent have developed a number of conspiracy theories.

Some believe that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal was responsible, although as he was based in Libya for part of the last 20 years, his involvement would not necessarily exonerate Colonel Gadaffi.

Others believe that the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command) was responsible, a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by Ahmed Jibril. It is known that this group was active in the Frankfurt, Germany area in October 1988, two months before PA 103 was attacked. It is also known that they were hiding IEDs inside a variety of household electronic equipment, including at least two Toshiba radio-cassette recorders. This information is known to Western agencies because one of the bombmakers, 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 PA 103. The CIA 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 has it 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 PA 103 who had found out about it, and who were on their way home to Washington to tell their superiors. Much is made of the rumors that heroin was allegedly found in the fields around Lockerbie. The conspiracy theorists fail to note that, had the heroin been switched for a bomb, it would not have arrived in Lockerbie, so the discovery of drugs in Lockerbie does not support their theory. The first version of this 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 after the bombing, and he wrote a report, called the Interfor report, blaming a CIA-protected drugs route. The theory was later given a boost by Lester Coleman, a self-proclaimed former freelance journalist turned minor DEA/DIA informant in Cyprus, who claimed to have seen one of the PA 103 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 these claims.

What is known is that there were two clear motives for the attack on PA 103. The first was the American bombing on 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 assessed as a hostile military aircraft.

It may never be known whether it was one or another of these acts that ultimately doomed PA 103; 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. Privately, some CIA officers who worked on the investigation believe that the PFLP-GC planned the attack, but that it was handed over to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the German arrests meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Others 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 became a useful patsy. This theory is naive in two respects. First, 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.

Trial in the Scottish Court in the Netherlands

In 1998, as several countries started to ignore the sanctions, the Libyan government conceded to a trial in a "neutral" country. 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 the sanctions were suspended.

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 two suspects were handed over on April 5, 1999, the trial began on May 3, 2000 and a verdict was reached on January 31, 2001. The trial was overseen by three judges, Lords Sutherland, McLean and Coulsfield. There was no jury.

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. Megrahi appealed against the verdict but his appeal was rejected on March 14, 2002 and he was moved to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow, Scotland. The site at Camp Zeist was then decommisioned and returned to the Dutch Government.

Subsequent events

There have been calls for a fresh appeal and for 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 United Nations ended the 15-year old sanctions against Libya. The sanctions were lifted because of the reparations.

On 24 November 2003, as required by European Human Rights law, the Scottish High Court set 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 shooting of Yvonne Fletcher in London.

His comments were retracted by Gadaffi, under intense and immediate pressure from Washington and London.

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

External links

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