The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie

In November 1991, two alleged Libyan intelligence officers, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing. (Getty Images)
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Updated 05 May 2020
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The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie

The truth about the deadliest terror attack in UK history may never be known

Summary

On Dec. 21, 1988 Pan-Am Flight 103, en route from Frankfurt, via London, to New York, crashed on the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and crew. Eleven residents in a single street in Lockerbie also died when part of the wreckage fell on the town.

Crash investigators quickly found traces of high explosives, triggering a forensic investigation that the aircraft had been downed by a bomb concealed inside a cassette player in a suitcase in the aircraft’s hold.

In November 1991, two alleged Libyan intelligence officers, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing. For nine years Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi refused to allow their extradition, but under pressure from international sanctions finally agreed to allow them to face trial for murder under Scots law in a special court in The Netherlands.

Fhimah was found not guilty but Al-Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment. Diagnosed with prostate cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds after serving a little over eight years of his sentence. He returned to a hero’s welcome in Libya, where he died almost three years later.

JEDDAH: The king leads the Saudi delegation at a GCC summit in Manama, there is a new government in Israel, and there is a crisis in Sudan; that Arab News front page could have been published almost any day this year.

Except the Saudi king was King Fahd, the Israeli prime minister was Yitzhak Shamir, and another report on the page tells you this not 2020, but Dec. 23, 1988. Two nights before, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York had been blown up by a terrorist bomb as it crossed the border between England and Scotland.

With a death toll of 270 — all 243 passengers and 16 crew, and 11 victims on the ground in Lockerbie, where the aircraft smashed into two residential streets at 800kph— it remains the deadliest terror attack in UK history.

Few events resonate all the way from a small Scottish border town to the White House. This was one such event. Lockerbie, with its 4,000 souls, joined that list of places in the UK and elsewhere — Aberfan, Munich, Srebrenica, My Lai — forever associated in the public consciousness with cruel and senseless loss of life. 

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Scotland, my country, and Glasgow, my city, are not soft places, nor are the journalists they produce noted for emotional incontinence. But I saw tough, cynical, diamond-hard reporters return from Lockerbie numbed into glazed-eyed silence by the enormity of what they saw there, and full of respect and admiration for the quiet dignity and fortitude with which its townspeople bore their losses. 

Most of the plane’s passengers were American, and their relatives flew from the US to identify bodies and possessions. The people of Lockerbie temporarily buried their own grief to provide accommodation, food, comfort and solace to the bereaved. Bonds were forged that remain to this day.




A page from the Arab News archive showing the news on Dec. 23, 1988.

When a terrorist attack was confirmed, the perpetrator identified by Washington was inevitable. The US and the regime of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya had been in a state of undeclared war for years, and US airstrikes in April 1986, far from cowing Qaddafi, appeared only to have incensed him.

US and UK investigators believe Libyan agents in Malta concealed a Semtex bomb inside a radio-cassette player and sent it in a suitcase to Frankfurt, where it was loaded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and the fate of 270 people was sealed.

Key Dates

  • 1

    The US Federal Aviation Authority issues a bulletin warning of an anonymous tip that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt will be blown up in the next two weeks.

  • 2

    Pan Am Flight 103 is destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie.

  • 3

    Alleged Libyan intelligence officers Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah are indicted for murder by US and Scottish authorities, but Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi refuses to allow their extradition for trial.

    Timeline Image Nov. 1991

  • 4

    After a nine-year standoff, Qaddafi agrees to allow Al-Megrahi and Fhimah to be tried under Scottish law in the Netherlands.

  • 5

    Al-Megrahi is jailed for life. Fhimah is found not guilty.

  • 6

    Al-Megrahi loses an appeal against his conviction.

    Timeline Image March 14, 2002

  • 7

    Qaddafi accepts Libya’s responsibility for the bombing and agrees to pay compensation to each of the victims’ families.

  • 8

    Al-Megrahi, with terminal prostate cancer diagnosed, is released on compassionate grounds and returns to Libya.

  • 9

    Libyan civil war breaks out.

  • 10

    Libya’s former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil claims Qaddafi’s regime was implicated in the bombing.

  • 11

    Qaddafi is killed by rebel militia while trying to flee after the fall of Tripoli.

  • 12

    Al-Megrahi dies, aged 60.

With some narratives, paradoxically, it can make sense to work backwards — from when Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, died at his home in Tripoli on May 20, 2012, at the age of 60.

More than 11 years earlier, in January 2001, three Scottish judges sitting at a special court in a former US air base in the Netherlands had sentenced Al-Megrahi to life imprisonment on 270 counts of murder for the Lockerbie bombing. He served more than eight years in two prisons in Scotland before the Scottish government released him on compassionate grounds when doctors said he had terminal cancer, and he returned to Libya in August 2009. Given three months to live, he lasted for nearly three years.

Al-Megrahi was, and remains, the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103; with his death, therefore, case closed? Well, no.

The repercussions began soon after the disaster, and continue to this day. Pan Am, its security operations exposed as criminally useless, was bankrupt after a year and out of business after two. UN sanctions against Qaddafi and Libya reinforced their pariah status, and the country remains a failed state embroiled in civil conflict. For the rest of us, airline and airport security have intensified on an apparently endless upward trajectory, and we can at least be grateful that an unaccompanied suitcase with a bomb inside can never again travel from Malta through two airports to the skies over Scotland.

“The Town Hall, decorated with festival lights and now hastily converted into a mortuary, was besieged by distraught relatives.”

From a Reuters story in Arab News, Dec. 23, 1988

Perhaps most significantly, however, Lockerbie may have marked the beginning of a collapse in public trust in what our governments tell us. Authorities in the US and the UK insist that Al-Megrahi was guilty, and that he acted alone or with a single accomplice. Few believe that.

Major world events — the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the moon landings, the 9/11 attacks on America — attract conspiracy theorists like iron to a magnet, and Lockerbie is no exception. It was Iran; it was the Palestinians; it was Mossad; it was the Stasi; it was apartheid South Africa.

What makes Lockerbie different is that one of the “theories” is almost certainly fact — which one, is anyone’s guess. One man more entitled that most to guess is Jim Swire, the softly spoken but determined English country doctor whose daughter Flora, 23, perished on board the plane. Swire, now in his eighties, has devoted his life to finding the truth about Lockerbie. He met and questioned Al-Megrahi. He met and questioned Qaddafi. He has been a thorn in the side of UK and US authorities for more than 30 years, and he believes to this day that the case against Al-Megrahi was a travesty and a tissue of lies, to cover up some ghastly truth that may never be known.

US President George H. W. Bush set up an aviation security commission in September 1989 to report on the plane’s sabotage, and British relatives of the victims met members of the commission at the US Embassy in London in February the following year. A member of Bush’s staff told one of the relatives: “Your government and ours know exactly what happened, but they are never going to tell.”

And that, surely, for the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, for their still grieving families, and for the people of Lockerbie, was the final insult.

  • Ross Anderson, associate editor at Arab News, was on duty as a senior editor at Today newspaper in London on the night of the Lockerbie disaster


UN calls for ‘immediate deescalation’ in Libyan capital

Updated 1 min 11 sec ago
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UN calls for ‘immediate deescalation’ in Libyan capital

  • The United Nations called for all parties to “engage in good faith” in deescalation and for the “swift implementation of security arrangements” set out during efforts to end the May violence

TRIPOLI: The UN mission in Libya called for “immediate deescalation,” citing reports of armed forces being mobilized in the capital and its surroundings that have raised fears of renewed violence.
In mid-May, there were clashes in Tripoli between forces loyal to the government and powerful armed groups wanting to dismantle it.
In a statement published late on Wednesday on X, the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said there were “increased reports of continued military build-up in and around Tripoli.”
It said it “strongly urges all parties to refrain from using force, particularly in densely populated areas, and to avoid any actions or political rhetoric that could trigger escalation or lead to renewed clashes.”
It called for all parties to “engage in good faith” in deescalation and for the “swift implementation of security arrangements” set out during efforts to end the May violence.
Those clashes left six people dead, the United Nations said.
“Forces recently deployed in Tripoli must withdraw without delay,” UNSMIL said.
Libya has been gripped by conflict since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising.
The country remains split between Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah’s UN-recognized government based in Tripoli and a rival administration based in the east.
In a TV interview on Monday, Dbeibah called for armed groups to vacate the areas under their control.
Among the sites held by armed factions are the Mitiga airport in the east of the capital, which is controlled by the powerful Radaa Force.
“Dialogue — not violence — remains the only viable path toward achieving lasting peace, stability in Tripoli and across Libya,” the UNSMIL statement said.


OPEC says no peak to oil demand before 2050

Updated 6 min 11 sec ago
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OPEC says no peak to oil demand before 2050

  • OPEC sees oil demand rising by 18.6% to around 123 mbd in 2050
  • It expects demand to grow for longer than other forecasters

PARIS: The OPEC oil cartel said Thursday that demand for crude will continue to expand through at least 2050, calling efforts to rapidly shift away from fossil fuels an unworkable fantasy.

In its latest annual report on the outlook for oil demand, OPEC sees global oil demand rising by 18.6 percent from 103.7 million barrels per day in 2024 to around 123 mbd in 2050.

That rising demand will be “driven by expanding economic growth, rising populations, increasing urbanization, new energy-intensive industries like artificial intelligence, and the need to bring energy to the billions without it,” said OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais in his foreword to the report.

“There is no peak oil demand on the horizon,” he said.

That forecast puts OPEC, which gathers together a number of the world’s leading oil exporting nations, at odds with the International Energy Agency, whose member states include many oil-consuming nations.

The IEA said last month that it expects global oil demand to begin to decline in 2030, driven by the rise of electric cars and the shift away from crude to produce power.

The IEA even sees oil demand dropping in Saudi Arabia as it replaces crude with gas and renewable energy to produce power.

Ghais said that OPEC sees growth in oil demand being primarily driven by developing nations, and that fossil fuels still account for around 80 percent of the global fuel mix, little changed from when the cartel was founded in 1960.

.”..it has become increasingly clear to many policymakers in recent years that the narrative of swiftly phasing out oil and gas has been seen for what it is: unworkable, and a fantasy,” he said.

The OPEC chief blasted many timelines to reach net-zero carbon emissions as having “little regard for energy security, affordability or feasibility.”

Experts say a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels is necessary if global warming is be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.


Pakistani finmin calls for reworking federal funding to provinces to reflect human development priorities

Updated 9 min 50 sec ago
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Pakistani finmin calls for reworking federal funding to provinces to reflect human development priorities

  • Muhammad Aurangzeb identifies climate change, population growth as ‘existential issues’
  • The minister calls for a ‘shift from infrastructure-heavy thinking to human capital investments’

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday called for a rethinking of how federal funds are allocated to provinces, arguing that future disbursements should reflect human development indicators instead of just population size.

Speaking at an event organized by the Ministry of National Health Services in connection with World Population Day in the federal capital, Aurangzeb said Pakistan’s rapid population growth posed a serious challenge and must be addressed through coordinated, long-term policy interventions.

“As we move forward with revisiting and reviewing the NFC [National Finance Commission] award, the current allocation driver must be reconsidered,” he said while addressing the gathering.

“There are broader factors, such as human development indicators, which should be incorporated,” he added. “These can help shape a revised formula for how we divvy up resources between the federation and the provinces.”

The NFC is a constitutional mechanism that determines how financial resources are distributed from the federal government to Pakistan’s provinces. The existing formula primarily weighs population, though there are several influential voices within the government demanding that future formulas consider a broader range of development metrics.

The finance minister also noted Pakistan must confront two “existential issues” — climate change and population growth — if it wants to reach its long-term goal of becoming a $3 trillion economy by 2047.

“Just think about it: 40 percent of children under the age of five in this country are stunted,” he said. “If we don’t address this, there is no sustainable path forward.”

Aurangzeb noted the issue extended beyond food and sanitation, pointing to the need for birth spacing, women’s education and family planning awareness.

He also emphasized the scale of available resources for addressing these challenges.

Referring to Pakistan’s recently signed 10-year Country Partnership Framework with the World Bank, he said the agreement includes $20 billion in financing, with $600–700 million annually earmarked for population-related measures.

“We have a lot of funds already at our disposal, provided we find the right places to invest and prioritize them correctly,” he said.

Aurangzeb also argued that Pakistan’s total development spending across federal and provincial budgets exceeds Rs 4.2 trillion ($14.7 billion).

“The issue isn’t funding,” he said. “We must shift from infrastructure-heavy thinking to human capital investments.”


Iran says 12 journalists killed in Israeli strikes during war

Updated 6 min 58 sec ago
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Iran says 12 journalists killed in Israeli strikes during war

  • The organization accused Israel of deliberately targeting media infrastructure

TEHRAN: Iran said Thursday that at least a dozen journalists and media workers were killed in Israeli strikes during the two countries’ recent war, according to state media.
The media arm of the Basij paramilitary forces — a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — said the death toll among media workers had risen to 12 following the identification of two additional individuals, the IRNA news agency reported.
The organization accused Israel of deliberately targeting media infrastructure “to silence the voice of truth” and suppress the “media of the Resistance Front” — a reference to Iran and allied groups opposed to Israel.
The announcement comes as casualty figures from the war have continued to rise, even after the end of the 12-day conflict, which began on June 13 with a surprise Israeli attack and saw an unprecedented bombing campaign that hit Iranian military facilities, nuclear sites and residential areas.
During the conflict, Israel also attacked the Iranian state broadcasting service in northern Tehran.
The Israeli campaign killed senior military commanders, nuclear scientists and hundreds of civilians, with the total death toll currently at 1,060, according to Iranian officials.
Retaliatory Iranian drone and missile barrages killed at least 28 people in Israel during the war, according to official figures.


UAE and Azerbaijan sign CEPA to expand trade and investment across key sectors 

Updated 24 min 14 sec ago
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UAE and Azerbaijan sign CEPA to expand trade and investment across key sectors 

RIYADH: The UAE and Azerbaijan have signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement to strengthen bilateral trade, enhance investments, and deepen cooperation in renewable energy, logistics, tourism, and construction. 

The deal is expected to contribute $680 million to the UAE’s gross domestic product and $300 million to Azerbaijan’s economy by 2031, according to the Emirates News Agency, also known as WAM. 

Signed in the presence of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the CEPA aims to enhance private sector collaboration, strengthen supply chain resilience, and promote the global expansion of small and medium-sized enterprises. 

It builds on a growing trade relationship between the two countries, with non-oil trade rising 43 percent year on year to reach $2.4 billion in 2024. 

The UAE is also Azerbaijan’s leading Arab investor, with cumulative investments exceeding $1 billion. 

Speaking after the signing, UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Thani Al-Zeyoudi described Azerbaijan as “a hugely valuable trade and investment partner for the UAE,” citing its strategic location and continued economic growth. 

“Our bilateral non-oil trade mirrors this growth, climbing 36.2 percent last year to reach $2.24 billion, which represents 50 percent of Azerbaijan’s trade with the GCC,” he said, according to WAM. 

Al-Zeyoudi said the CEPA would unlock new opportunities across manufacturing, agriculture, and automotive, as well as logistics and financial services. 

He also noted plans to expand UAE investments in energy and renewables through national companies such as ADNOC and Masdar, with the goal of building a joint logistics infrastructure to enhance access to broader regional and global markets. 

Azerbaijan’s agreement adds to the UAE’s expanding CEPA program, a key pillar of its foreign trade agenda that targets $1.1 trillion in non-oil trade by 2031. 

In 2024, the initiative contributed to a record $816 billion in non-oil trade, representing a 14.6 percent increase over the previous year. 

The UAE has now concluded 27 CEPAs with global markets representing more than one-quarter of the world’s population. 

The deal is part of the country’s broader strategy to advance economic diversification through strategic international partnerships, the WAM statement said.

Kuwait and Jordan strengthen ties

Kuwait and Jordan held the fifth session of their Joint Higher Committee in Kuwait City this week. 

Co-chaired by Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah Al-Yahya and Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi, the session resulted in six cooperation agreements and an executive program spanning the economic, investment, cultural, and tourism sectors, according to Kuwait News Agency.