Pan Am Flight 103 (involved in the Lockerbie bombing) was a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York City that was destroyed by a terrorist bomb on Wednesday, 21 December 1988, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew on board. Large sections of the aircraft crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 more people on the ground.
Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi eventually handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, Netherlands after protracted negotiations and UN sanctions. In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was jailed for the bombing. In August 2009, he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, remaining the only person to be convicted for the attack.
In 2003, Gaddafi accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the families of the victims, although he maintained never having given the order for the attack. During the Libyan civil war, in 2011, a former government official contradicted Gaddafi claiming that the Libyan leader had personally ordered the bombing. Despite these assertions, numerous conspiracy theories have developed regarding responsibility for the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103.
To date, in the United Kingdom, it remains the deadliest aviation incident, as well as the deadliest act of terrorism.
With 189 Americans killed, the bombing was the deadliest act of terror against the U.S. prior to 11 September 2001.
