Pan Am Flight 103: Difference between revisions

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The nose, containing the flight crew and first-class section, landed in a farmer's field near a tiny church in Tundergarth, Scotland

Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' second daily Frankfurt-London-New York-Detroit flight. On December 21, 1988, a bomb exploded in its forward cargo hold as it flew over Scotland, near the border town of Lockerbie. Two hundred and seventy citizens of 21 countries died, including 11 people on the ground. The bombing was widely regarded as an assault on a symbol of the United States, and with 189 of the victims American, it stands as the deadliest attack on American civilians before September 11, 2001, and the subject of Britain's largest criminal inquiry. It became known as Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie bombing, and the Lockerbie air disaster.

On the night of the bombing, a Boeing 747-121A (N739PA) [1] named Clipper Maid of the Seas was operating the London-New York leg of the route. At 19:02:57 UTC, almost 38 minutes into the flight, and minutes after the aircraft had entered Scottish airspace at a cruising altitude of 31,000 ft, around 12-16 ozs of plastic explosive was detonated in the forward cargo hold underneath the business-class cabin, triggering a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft. Winds aloft of 100 mph scattered passengers and debris from the flight along an 88-mile corridor over an area of 845 miles².

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Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi

On November 13, 1991, after a three-year joint investigation by the Scottish police, led by the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — an investigation that saw 15,000 witness statements taken — indictments for murder were issued against Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager in Malta.

United Nations sanctions against Libya and protracted negotiations with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi secured the handover of the accused on April 5, 1999, to Scottish police in the Netherlands, chosen as a neutral venue. On January 31, 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fhimah was acquitted. Megrahi's appeal against his conviction was refused on March 14, 2002. He is serving his sentence in Greenock Prison near Glasgow, where he continues to protest his innocence.

The passengers

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The map shows the town of Lockerbie, situated on the Scottish side of the border between Scotland and England.

The flight had started as PA 103A in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, operated by a Boeing 727 for the leg to Heathrow Airport in London, England. Forty-seven of the eighty-nine passengers on PA 103A changed aircraft there to a 747 that had arrived at noon from San Francisco, and had been parked at stand K-14, guarded for two hours by Pan Am's security company, Alert Security, but otherwise not watched. The flight, thereafter called PA 103, continued on its journey to JFK airport in New York.

There were 243 passengers on board and 16 crew members, led by the pilot, Captain James MacQuarrie, First Officer Raymond Wagner, and flight engineer Jerry Avritt. Thirty-five students from Syracuse University were on board, flying home from an overseas study program in London. Five members of the Dixit family, including three-year-old Suruchi Rattan, were flying to Detroit from New Delhi. They were supposed to be on Flight 67 that had left Frankfurt earlier in the day, but one of the children had fallen ill with breathing difficulties, and the pilot had taken the unusual step of bringing the plane back to the gate, to allow the family to disembark. The boy soon recovered, and the family was transferred to PA 103 instead.

Suruchi was wearing a bright red kurta and salwar: a knee-length tunic and matching pants. She became forever associated with an anonymous note left with flowers at a Lockerbie memorial site in London:

To the little girl in the red dress who made my flight from Frankfurt such fun. You didn't deserve this.

There were at least four U.S. intelligence officers on the passenger list, with rumors, never confirmed, of a fifth. Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in Clipper Class, seat 14J. Major Chuck "Tiny" McKee [2], a 6 ft 5 ins, 270-lb senior army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Beirut, sat behind Gannon in the center aisle in 15F. Two CIA officers, believed to be acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee, were sitting in economy: Ronald Lariviere, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was in 20H, and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, sat five rows behind Lariviere in 25H, both men seated over the right wing.

The four men had flown together out of Cyprus that morning. Major McKee is believed to have been in Beirut trying to locate the American hostages held at that time by Hezbollah. The presence of these men on the flight gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, in which Gannon or McKee were said to have been the bombers' targets.

Also on board, in seat 53K at the back of the plane, was 20-year-old Khalid Nazir Jaafar, who had moved from Lebanon to Detroit with his family, where his father ran a successful auto-repair business. Because of his Lebanese background, and because he was returning from having visited relatives there, Jaafar's name later figured prominently in the investigation into the bombing.

Last contact with Flight 103

The flight was scheduled to depart at 18:00, and pushed back from the gate at 18:04, but due to a 25-minute delay, not unusual during rush-hour at Heathrow airport, the flight took off from runway 27L at 18:25 instead, flying northwest out of Heathrow — a so-called Daventry departure — due to high winds, rather than by its normal route, west over Ireland. Once clear of Heathrow, the pilot steered due north toward Scotland. At 18:56, as the aircraft approached the border, it reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 ft (six miles), and MacQuarrie dragged the engine back to cruising speed.

At 19:00, PA 103 was picked up by Oceanic Control at Prestwick, Scotland, where it needed clearance to begin its 3,469-mile flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Alan Topp, an air traffic controller, made contact with the clipper as it entered Scottish airspace.

Capt James McQuarrie replied: "Good evening Scottish, Clipper one zero three. We are at level three one zero." These were the last words heard from the aircraft.

The explosion

At 19:01, Topp watched Flight 103 approach the corner of the Solway Firth, and at 19:02, it crossed its northern coast. PA 103 appeared as a small green square with a cross at its center showing the aircraft's transponder code or "squawk" — 0357 310 68546.9. The code gave Topp information about the time and height of the plane: the last code he saw for the Clipper told him the flight was at 31,000 ft at 46.9 seconds past 19:02.

At 19:03, the plane's code and the cross in the middle of the square disappeared. Topp tried to make contact with Captain McQuarrie, and asked a nearby KLM flight to do the same, but there was no reply. Topp's screen then began to show the break-up of the aircraft. After eight seconds, where there should have been one green square, there were four, and as the seconds passed, the squares began to fan out across his screen, covering an area that Topp knew represented a mile of airspace. At first, Topp believed he was watching the flight enter a so-called zone of silence: dead space where objects are invisible to radar.

A minute later, the wing section containing 200,000 lbs of fuel hit the ground at Sherwood Cresent, Lockerbie. The British Geological Survey in southern Scotland registered a seismic event measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale as all trace of two families, several houses, and the 196-foot-long left wing of the aircraft disappeared. A British Airways pilot, Captain Robin Chamberlain, flying the Glasgow-London shuttle near Carlisle called Oceanic Control to report that he could see a massive fire on the ground. The destruction of PA 103 continued on Topp's screen, by now full of bright squares moving eastwards with the wind. [3]

How the aircraft broke up

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The explosion punched a 20-inch hole, almost directly under the P in Pan Am, on the left side of the 225-foot-long fuselage. The disintegration of the aircraft was rapid. Investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) of the British Department of Transport concluded that the nose of the aircraft separated from the main section within three seconds of the explosion.

The flight data recorder, a bright orange-coloured recording device located in the tail section of the aircraft, was found in a field by police searchers within 24 hours of the bombing. There was no evidence of a distress call: a 180-millisecond hissing noise could be heard as the explosion destroyed the aircraft's communications center. Because several minutes of recording time were stored in volatile memory, which is erased when the power is cut, whatever happened in the cockpit just before the explosion was lost (Shifrin 1990).

After being lowered into the cockpit in Lockerbie before it was moved, and while the bodies of the flight crew were still inside it, investigators from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concluded that no emergency procedures had been started. The pressure control and fuel switches were both set for cruise, and the crew had not used their oxygen masks, which would have descended within five seconds of any emergency (Cox and Foster 1992).

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. Investigators concluded that the force of the explosion broke through this wall, and shook the flight-control cables, causing the front section of the fuselage to begin to roll, pitch, and yaw.

These violent movements snapped the reinforcing belt that secured the front section to the row of windows on the left side and it began to break away. At the same time, shock waves from the blast ricocheted back from the fuselage skin in the direction of the bomb, meeting pulses still coming from the epicenter of the explosion. This produced Mach stem shock waves, calculated to be 25 per cent faster than, and double the power of, the waves from the explosion itself (Cox and Foster, 1992). These shockwaves rebounded from one side of the aircraft to the other, running down the length of the fuselage through the air-conditioning ducts and splitting the fuselage open. [4] (pdf) A section of the 747's roof several feet above the point of detonation peeled away. The Mach stem waves pulsing through the air-conditioning ductwork bounced off overhead luggage racks and other hard surfaces, jolting the passengers.

The power of the explosion was enhanced by the difference in air pressure between the inside of the aircraft, where it was kept at breathable levels, and outside, where it was about a quarter of what it is at sea level. The nose of the aircraft, containing the crew and the first class section, broke away, striking the No. 3 Pratt & Whitney engine as it snapped off.

Investigators believe that within three seconds of the explosion, the cockpit, fuselage, and No. 3 engine were falling separately. The fuselage continued moving forward and down until it reached 19,000 feet, at which point its dive became almost vertical. [5]

As it descended, the fuselage broke into smaller pieces, with the section attached to the wings landing first in Sherwood Crescent, where the 200,000 pounds of aviation fuel inside the wings ignited, causing a fireball that destroyed several houses, and which was so intense that nothing remained of the 196-foot left wing of the aircraft. Investigators were able to determine that both wings had landed in the crater only after counting the number of large, steel flapjack screws that were found there (Cox and Foster 1992).

The victims

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Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie

The passengers and crew

All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed. A Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry, which opened on October 1, 1990, heard that, when the cockpit was torn off, tornado-force winds would have torn through the fuselage, tearing clothes off passengers and turning objects like drink carts into lethal pieces of shrapnel.

Because of the sudden change in air pressure, the gases inside the passengers would have expanded to four times their normal volume, causing their lungs to swell and then collapse. People and objects not fixed down would have been sucked out of the aircraft at nearly 500 mph (800 km/h) into a crosswind of 130 mph (210 km/h) and an air temperature of minus 50 °F (−45 °C) their six-mile (9 km) fall lasting about two minutes (Cox and Foster 1992). Some passengers remained attached to the fuselage by their seatbelts, landing in Lockerbie still strapped to their seats.

Although they would have lost consciousness because of the lack of oxygen, forensic examiners believe some of the passengers regained consciousness as they fell toward the oxygen-rich lower altitudes. Forensic pathologist Dr. William G. Eckert, director of the Milton Helpern International Center of Forensic Sciences at Wichita State University, who examined the autopsy evidence, told Scottish police he believed the flight crew, some of the flight attendants, and 147 other passengers survived the bomb blast and depressurization of the aircraft, and may have been alive on impact. None of these passengers showed signs of injury from the explosion itself, or from the decompression and disintegration of the aircraft. The inquest heard that a mother was found holding her baby; two friends were holding hands; and a number of passengers were found clutching crucifixes. Dr. Eckert told Scottish police that distinctive marks on the pilot's thumb suggested he had been hanging onto the yoke of the plane as he descended, and may have been alive when he landed.

Captain MacQuarrie, the first officer, the flight engineer, a flight attendant, and a number of first-class passengers were found still strapped to their seats inside the nose section, where it landed in a field by a tiny church in the village of Tundergarth.

The inquest heard that the flight attendant was alive when found by a farmer's wife, but died before her rescuer could summon help. A male passenger was also found alive, and medical authorities believe he might have survived had he been found earlier (Cox and Foster 1992).

Sixty passengers, including Major Charles McKee and Khalid Jaafar, landed on the town's golf course, while others landed in gardens, some still attached to their seats, or were found hanging from trees. Fifty passengers, many of them the Syracuse students, still attached to part of the fuselage, landed two miles (3 km) northeast of Sherwood Crescent in the garden of Ella Ramsden at 71 Park Place. Ramsden's house was destroyed, but she survived with her dog, Cara, even though the house had collapsed around them.

Ten passengers were never identified. Eight of these passengers, including the CIA bodyguards Ronald Lariviere and Daniel O'Connor, had been assigned seats in the economy section above the wings, and are believed to have been attached to the wing structure as it landed in Sherwood Crescent.

Lockerbie residents

On the ground, 11 Lockerbie residents were killed when the wings hit 13 Sherwood Cresent at over 500 mph and exploded, creating a crater 155 feet long and 40 feet wide, vaporizing several houses and their foundations, and damaging 21 others so badly they had to be demolished. Four members of one family, Jack and Rosalind Somerville and their children, Paul and Lynsey, died when their house at 15 Sherwood Crescent exploded. A fireball rose above the houses and flashed toward the nearby London-Glasgow motorway, scorching cars in the southbound lanes, leading motorists and local residents to believe that there had been a meltdown at the nearby Calder Hall nuclear power plant. The only house left standing intact in the area belonged to Father Patrick Keegans, Lockerbie's Roman Catholic priest. [6]

For many days, Lockerbie residents lived with the sight of bodies in their yards and in the streets, as forensic workers photographed and tagged the location of each body to help determine the exact position and force of the on-board explosion, by coordinating information about each passenger's assigned seat, type of injury, and where they had landed.

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Local resident Bunty Galloway told authors Geraldine Sheridan and Thomas Kenning (1993):

There were spoons, underwear, headsquares, everything on the ground. A boy was lying at the bottom of the steps on to the road. A young laddie with brown socks and blue trousers on. Later that evening my son-in-law asked for a blanket to cover him. I didn't know he was dead. I gave him a lamb's wool travelling rug thinking I'd keep him warm. Two more girls were lying dead across the road, one of them bent over garden railings. It was just as though they were sleeping. The boy lay at the bottom of my stairs for days. Every time I came back to my house for clothes he was still there. "My boy is still there," I used to tell the waiting policeman. Eventually on Saturday I couldn't take it no more. "You got to get my boy lifted," I told the policeman. That night he was moved.

Despite being advised by their governments not to travel to Lockerbie, many of the passengers' relatives, most of them from the U.S., arrived there within days to identify their loved ones. Volunteers from Lockerbie set up and manned canteens, which stayed open 24 hours a day, where relatives, soldiers, police officers, and social workers could find free sandwiches, hot meals, coffee, and someone to talk to. The women of the town washed, dried, and ironed every piece of clothing that was found, so that as many items as possible could be returned to the relatives once the police had determined they were of no forensic value. The BBC's Scottish correspondent, Andrew Cassel, reported on the tenth anniversary of the bombing that the townspeople had "opened their homes and hearts" to the relatives, bearing their own losses "stoically and with enormous dignity," and that the bonds forged that day continue to this. [7]

Search for clues

From the start, the British government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher treated the bombing as a criminal matter requiring a judicial response, not a terrorist act that might have triggered military reprisals. It was "murder, pure and simple," according to Scotland's chief law officer, the Procurator Fiscal. For a prosecution to succeed, the crash site had to be regarded as the scene of a crime, and every piece of debris from the plane, its passengers, and crew had to be retrieved in case it shed light on what had happened, and who had placed the bomb on the flight.

Around 1,000 Scottish police officers and members of the British Army carried out a fingertip search of the crash site that lasted months, retrieving over 10,000 items from the fields and forests of southern Scotland, a search area of over 845 miles². The searchers were divided into parties of eight to ten people, with the instruction: "If it isn't growing and it isn't a rock, pick it up" (Emerson and Duffy 1990).

British military helicopters flew over the crash site, pointing out large pieces of wreckage to the search parties. Smaller, private helicopters equipped with infrared cameras were drafted in to search the heavily wooded areas that surround Lockerbie, as these were small enough to fly in low to find and photograph hidden pieces of debris. Within hours of the bombing, a French satellite had delivered photographs of the area to searchers. The United States Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) arranged for spy satellites, capable of reading a newspaper on the ground from several miles in the sky, to provide high-resolution photographs of the woods (ibid).

Every item picked up was tagged, placed into a clear plastic bag, labeled, and taken to the gymnasium of a local school, where each piece of debris was x-rayed, and checked for explosive residue with a device known as a gas chromatograph, which analysed the chemical composition of each item, after which everything known about it was entered into the computer tracking system called HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (ibid).

Reconstruction of the aircraft and luggage containers

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Technicians working on the reconstruction said it was like "a spooky phoenix rising from the ashes" (ibid).

All the parts of the recovered aircraft were taken initially to a hangar in Longtown, Scotland, where they were examined by investigators from the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), and from there, moved to Farnborough, Hampshire, where the fuselage was reconstructed. Investigators found an area on the left side of the lower fuselage in the forward cargo hold area, at position 14L, directly under the 747's navigation and communications systems, where a small section about 20 in² (140 cm³)had been completely shattered, with signs of pitting and sooting. The skin had been bent and torn back in a so-called starburst pattern, petalled outwards, a pattern that was evidence of an explosion.

The forward cargo hold had been loaded by a Pan Am loader-driver, John Bedford, with the suitcases placed inside 125 ft³ (3.5 m³) containers, most of them made of aluminum. After the explosion, most of these containers showed damage consistent with a fall from 31,000 feet (9,500 m), but two of them mdash; containers AVE 4041PA and AVN 7511PA — showed unusual damage. From the loading plan, investigators saw that AVE 4041 had been situated inboard of, and slightly above, the starburst-patterned hole in the fuselage, with AVN 7511 right next to it. The reconstruction of container AVE 4041 showed blackening, pitting, and severe damage to the floor panel and other areas, indicating that what the investigators called a "high-energy event" had taken place inside it. [8] (pdf)

Though the floor of the container was damaged, there was no blackening or pitting of the floor, and from this, and the distribution of sooting and pitting, investigators calculated that the suitcase containing the bomb had not rested on the floor, but had likely been on top of another suitcase.

Using the damage to adjacent container AVN 7511 to guide them, they concluded that the explosion had occurred about 13 inches (0.33 m) from the floor of AVE 4041 and about 24 inches (0.6 m) from the skin of the fuselage. Federal Aviation Administration investigators then conducted a series of tests, in which luggage containers similar to AVE 4041 were blown up in an effort to reproduce the same sooting and pitting pattern. The tests confirmed the AAIB opinion regarding the position of the bomb. [9]

This evidence would be crucial in determining where the bomb suitcase had originated from. Bedford's evidence about the precise location of the container, and the location of the suitcases inside it, helped investigators piece together the movements and origin of the bomb suitcase. Bedford particularly remembered handling container AVE 4041, he told the investigators, because he was born in 1940, and his wife in 1941 (Cox and Foster 1992).

The Samsonite suitcase and the bomb

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A Toshiba RT-SF 16 Bombeat, identical to the one that housed the bomb.

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The inside of a Toshiba radio-cassette-recorder containing hidden bomb components found with members of the PFLP-GC two months before PA 103.

An analysis by the British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) of the fine carbon deposits on AVE 4041 and AVN 7511 indicated that a chemical explosion had occurred; that a charge of about 14 ozs. of plastic explosive had been used; and that the explosion had occurred 200 mms from the left side of the container. Investigators at the British Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) in Fort Halstead, Kent, which houses one of the world's most advanced forensic laboratories, examined two strips of metal from AVE 4041 and found traces of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX), components of Semtex-H, a high-performance plastic explosive manufactured in the village of Semtin, Czechoslovakia. [10] In March 1990, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel disclosed that the former communist regime had supplied 1,000 tons of Semtex to the Libyan government. [11]

During the fingertip searches around Lockerbie, 56 fragments of a suitcase were found that showed extensive, close-range blast damage. With the help of luggage manufacturers, it was determined that the fragments had been part of a brown, hardshell, Samsonite suitcase of the 26-inch Silhouette 4000 range. A further 24 items of luggage, including clothing, were determined by RARDE to have been within a very close range of the suitcase when it exploded, and probably inside it.

The blast fragments included parts of a radio cassette player, and a small piece of circuit board. This rang alarm bells within the intelligence communities in Britain, the U.S., and Germany. The German police had recovered a Semtex bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player in an apartment in Neuss, Germany, in October 1988, two months before PA 103 exploded. The bomb, one of five, had been in the possession of members of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army captain. A RARDE scientist traveled to Germany to examine this bomb, and though he found that the Lockerbie fragments did not precisely match the Toshiba model, they were similar enough for him to contact Toshiba. With the company's help, RARDE discovered there were seven models in which the printed circuit board bore exactly the same details as the fragment RARDE had found.

Further examination of the clothing believed to have been in the bomb suitcase found fragments of paper from a Toshiba RT-SF 16 Bombeat radio cassette player embedded into two Slalom-brand men's shirts, a blue baby's jumpsuit of the Babygro Primark brand, and a pair of tartan trousers. Fragments of plastic consistent with the material used on a Bombeat, and pieces of loudspeaker mesh, were found embedded in other clothing which appeared to have been inside the bomb suitcase: a white, Abanderado-brand T-shirt; cream-colored pyjamas; a fragment of a knitted, brown, woollen cardigan with the label "Puccini design"; a herringbone jacket; and brown herringbone material, some of which bore a label indicating it came from a pair of size-34 Yorkie-brand men's trousers.

Contained within this herringbone material were five clumps of blue and white fibers consistent with the blue Babygro material. Trapped between two pieces of Babygro fibers were the remains of a label with the words "Made in Malta." This label was the first indication of possible Libyan involvement.

RARDE also found the fragments of a black nylon umbrella that showed signs of blast damage. Stuck to the canopy material, there were blue and white fibers, consistent with the fragments of the Babygro. [12] Investigors were left in no doubt that these items had been wrapped around the bomb inside the Samonsite suitcase, probably placed there by the bomber himself.

Mary's House, Sliema, Malta

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Mary's House, the store in Sliema, Malta, where the prosecution alleged Megrahi bought the clothes that were wrapped around the Lockerbie bomb

As well as the Babygro carrying the label "Made in Malta," detectives discovered that Yorkie-brand trousers are manufactured in Malta by Yorkie Clothing. In August 1989, Scottish detectives flew to Malta, to speak to the owner, who directed them to Yorkie's main outlet on the island — Mary's House in Sliema, run by Toni Gauci, who would become the prosecution's most important witness.

Gauci recalled that, about two weeks before the bombing, he had sold the Yorkie trousers to a man of Libyan appearance, who spoke a mixture of Arabic, English, and Maltese with a Libyan accent. Gauci remembered the sale well, he told the police, because the customer didn't seem to care what he was buying. He bought an old tweed jacket that Gauci had been trying to get rid of for years, a blue Babygro, a woollen cardigan, and a number of other items, all different styles and sizes. Gauci had seen this customer before and, he told police, had seen him since the bombing too, in Malta, just a few weeks previously. At this point, the Scottish police believed they might be in a position to make an arrest. Days later, the Sunday Times of London became aware of the story, not least because of the Scottish detectives' habit of going for a walk together at lunchtime every day, conspicuous as a group in their black police officers' trousers and white shirts. Rumors spread around the island that the Lockerbie police were in Malta looking for the bomber. An American journalist who approached one of the detectives to ask whether he was from Lockerbie was told "No comment" in a broad Scottish accent, which was taken as confirmation, and the story reached David Leppard, an investigative reporter with the Sunday Times. Because of the publication of his story, any chance of arresting the suspect in Malta was lost.

Before the detectives left his store that day, Gauci remembered something else. Just as the Libyan-looking customer reached the door, Gauci said, it had started to rain. Gauci had asked him whether he also wanted to buy an umbrella, and he did. The detectives paid Gauci for an umbrella identical to the one the customer had purchased. They took it back to Lockerbie and searched through the remains of the black umbrellas that were found at the crash site, until they found parts of one that seemed to match Gauci's. The parts were sent to RARDE for examination, where traces of the blue Babygro were found embedded into the umbrella's fabric, indicating that both had, indeed, been inside the Samsonite suitcase.

The timer fragment

Six months after the bombing, a Scottish detective going through a bag of evidence found a fingernail-size piece of green plastic stuck to the charred collar of a man's shirt that had been found in woods near Lockerbie three weeks after the bombing, on January 13, 1989. The 0.4 inch fragment was first sent to RARDE, which identified it as possibly part of a timing device, and then to Washington, where Thomas Thurman, an FBI explosives expert, identified the fragment as coming from the same type of timer previously discovered inside an unexploded bomb seized from Libyan agents in the African state of Togo. The Togo timer had the letters MEBO imprinted on it.

Detectives discovered that MEBO stood for Meister and Bollier, an electronics firm in Zürich, Switzerland. It emerged at trial that Edwin Bollier had sold 20 so-called MST-13 timers identical to the one found in the Togo bomb to Megrahi days before the Lockerbie bombing. The timers were capable of being set to between one minute and 999 hours.

The trial

The Scottish Court in the Netherlands

In 1998, as several Arab and African countries began to ignore the United Nations's economic sanctions against Libya, the Libyan government conceded to a trial in a neutral country. Colonel Gadaffi agreed to the accused being handed over to the Scottish police for trial before three judges without a jury, a stipulation of Gadaffi's. The British government also had to agree that the accused would not be interviewed by the police, and that no one else in Libya would be sought in connection with the bombing.

The neutral venue chosen for the trial was in the Netherlands, where the so-called Scottish Court in the Netherlands was established in a former United States Air Force base at Camp Zeist. The area was declared sovereign territory of the United Kingdom and governed by Scots Law under a treaty signed by the British and Dutch governments. In August 1998, United Nations sanctions against Libya were suspended, though not lifted.

The two accused arrived in the Netherlands on April 5, 1999, and the trial opened on May 3, 2000, eleven years, four months and 13 days after the bombing. The judges were Lord Sutherland, the longest serving member of the Scottish High Court of Justiciary, Lord Coulsfield, and Lord MacLean.

Representing Megrahi were Alistair Duff, his solicitor; William Taylor QC; David Burns QC; and John Beckett. Fhimah was represented by Eddie McKechnie; Richard Keen QC; Jack Davidson QC; and Murdo MacLeod. The U.S. Department of Justice was represented by Brian Murtaugh, who had helped draw up the indictment against the accused, and Dana Biehl.

On the advice on his legal team, Megrahi did not take the stand in his own defense, which many observers felt hurt his case, as the court was left with no explanation for his presence in Malta on the day of the bombing, or for the fact that he had traveled there under an assumed name, using a fake passport.

Verdicts were reached on January 31, 2001. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years, later set at a minimum of 27 years before he can apply for parole. Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty and returned home to Libya the next day. An appeal by Megrahi was rejected on March 14, 2002 and he was moved to Barlinnie prison near Glasgow, where for two years he lived in a specially constructed suite of cells, built to house him and Fhimah, containing several rooms, including a kitchen where he could prepare Arabic food. The site at Camp Zeist has been decommissioned and returned to the Dutch government.

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Supporters of Megrahi call him Lockerbie's 271st victim.

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 conviction, and in June 2002 Nelson Mandela showed his sympathy by visiting him in prison.

On November 24 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 being approached by some of the families of the American victims, saying the sentence was "too lenient"; Megrahi's legal team is appealing it because they say it is too harsh.

In February 2005, Megrahi was moved unexpectedly from Barlinnie to Greenock prison, near Glasgow, where he no longer lives in solitary confinement. His lawyers have protested the move, which they say violates the agreement with Libya and the UN that Megrahi would receive special treatment.

Relations with Libya

In October 2002, it was reported that the Libyan government had made an offer of compensation to the victims' relatives of $2.7 billion, about $10 million per victim. On August 15, 2003, Libya formally accepted responsibility for the bombing, although the statement lacked an expression of remorse for the lives lost, and on September 12, 2003, the UN removed the santions.

Some observers believe that the acceptance of responsibility amounted to a business deal aimed at having the sanctions overturned, rather than an admission of guilt. On 24 February, 2004, Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem stated in a BBC interview that his country had paid the compensation as the "price for peace" and to secure the lifting of 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 later retracted by Colonel Gadaffi, under pressure from Washington and London.

Alternative theories

Those who believe Megrahi is innocent believe that Palestinian groups commissioned by Iran may have carried out the bombing.

There were two obvious motives for the attack on PA 103. The first was the American bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya, in 1985, during which a little girl Colonel Gadaffi and his wife had adopted was killed. Another possible motive was the July 3, 1988 downing over the Persian Gulf of Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger jet incorrectly identified by an American warship, the USS Vincennes, as a hostile military aircraft. Two hundred and ninety passengers from six countries died, including 66 children, when the plane was shot down. The Iranian government and people were shocked when America continued with its July 4 celebrations the next day, which appeared to indicate that the U.S. did not regret, or may even have intended, the deaths. Many PA 103 relatives believe that this would have given Iran reason to order a revenge attack on an American flight six months later.

Iran, the PFLP-GC, and Operation Autumn Leaves

File:PAAhmedJibril.jpg

Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC who in 1988 said: "There will be no safety for any traveler on an Israeli or American aircraft.”

Some of the PA 103 relatives' groups believe that the second motive was prematurely discounted by investigators, though for many months after the bombing, the prime suspects were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain, Ahmed Jibril. This group was active in the Frankfurt area in October 1988, two months before PA 103 was bombed. The German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany's internal security service, had members of the group under surveillance as they prepared a number of bombs hidden inside household electronic equipment, including at least one Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio-cassette recorders, similar though not identical to the RT-SF 16 Bombeat used to blow up PA 103.

The detonating device of the PFLP-GC Toshiba bomb was also not identical, (Duffy and Emerson, 1990). The bombs they built contained barometric triggers, designed to go off when the aircraft reached cruising height, whereas the PA 103 bomb is believed to have contained only a timer. A barometric trigger on the PA 103 bomb would have caused it to explode when the Air Malta flight reached cruising altitude. A bomb with a reliable timing device, on the other hand, can be flown on several flights before detonating at a pre-set time. The information about the PFLP-GC in Germany is known to Western agencies because the group's bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, was a Jordanian double-agent, reporting everything the group did back to the GID, the Jordanian intelligence service. The GID, in turn, was passing the information to the German police. On October 26, the Germans arrested the group, but at least two members are known to have escaped arrest, and at least one of the Toshiba bombs is believed to have disappeared too. Some of the PA 103 relatives believe it is too stark a coincidence that, eight weeks later, a Toshiba Bombeat was used to down PA 103. Scottish police wrote up an arrest warrant for Marwan Khreesat in the spring of 1989, but were persuaded not to issue it. In connection with the PA 103 investigation, the late King Hussein of Jordan arranged for Khreesat to be interviewed by the FBI and Thomas Thurman, the American forensic investigator, during which Khreesat described in detail the bombs he had built. Khreesat told investigators that one of the PFLP-GC members had taken him on a visit to Frankfurt airport, where they had looked at Pan Am schedules.

Some relatives, investigators, and journalists have speculated that Libyan and Iranian-paid agents may have worked on the bombing together; or that one group handed the job over to a second group when the Germans rounded up the PFLP-GC members in Frankfurt. The former head of counter-terrorism for the CIA, Vincent Cannistaro, who worked on the PA 103 investigation, has told reporters he believes the PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government, then subcontracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the German arrests meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other investigators believe that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed.

=Iran, the London angle, and the Achille Lauro

Megrahi's defense team believes the bomb may have been placed on board the flight at Heathrow, not in Malta. The 747 that carried the passengers on the London-New York leg of the flight had arrived from San Francisco at noon on December 21, and stood unguarded on the tarmac for much of the period before Flight 103's passengers began to board at between five and six o'clock in the evening. The Iran Air terminal stood right next to the Pan Am one, and they shared tarmac space. The Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry heard evidence that the luggage container AVE 4041, which was found to have contained the bomb suitcase, had stood unsupervised on the tarmac for a period of 40 minutes that day.

The criminal trial also heard evidence, during cross-examination of Jim Berwick, Pan Am's head of corporate security for Europe, that one of the passengers on board an earlier London-Los Angeles flight that day — Pan Am 107, which left Heathrow at 1:30 pm — was Armad Jusif Saoud Jusif, also known as Ali Nassr Zia, who was wanted in connection with the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking.

The CIA-protected suitcase

One theory, for which no evidence has been produced, suggests that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was allowing Syrian drug dealers to ship heroin to the United States using PA 103, in exchange for intelligence on Palestinian groups in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected these suitcases and made sure they were not searched, but on the day of the bombing, terrorists exchanged the drugs for a bomb.

Another version of the same theory is that the CIA knew this exchange had been made, but let it happen anyway, because the CIA protection of the suitcases was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on PA 103 — Matthew Gannon and Chuck McKee — had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.

The former version of the protected-suitcase theory was suggested in October 1989 by Juval Aviv, the owner of Interfor Inc., a private investigation company in New York. Aviv says he is the former Mossad officer who led the Israeli "Wrath of God" team that killed several Palestinians believed to be responsible for the Munich Massacre, during which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by the Black September Palestinian group at the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972. Aviv's story was told by Canadian journalist George Jonas in his 1984 book Vengeance and in the 1986 film The Sword of Gideon.

Aviv was employed by Pan Am as a consultant after the bombing, and submitted a report to the airline, the so-called Interfor Report, which blamed the bombing on 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 held liable. However, the New York court hearing the relatives' case against Pan Am rejected the Interfor report.

The protected-suitcase theory was later supported by Lester Coleman, a self-proclaimed former freelance journalist, turned informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Cyprus. Coleman claimed to have seen one of the PA 103 passengers, Lebanese-American Khalid Jafar, in a DEA office in Cyprus, thereby implying that Jafar was a DEA drugs mule, and may have unwittingly carried the bomb. In 1993, Coleman turned his story into a book, Trail of the Octopus. No evidence has been advanced to support his claims.

Memorials

File:PAelegy.jpg

Dark Elegy by Susan Lowenstein

Syracuse University's memorial

There are a number of private and public memorials to the PA 103 victims. Dark Elegy [13] is the work of sculptor Susan Lowenstein of Long Island, whose son Alexander, then 21, was a passenger on the flight. The work consists of 43 statues of the naked wives and mothers who lost a husband or a child. Inside each sculpture, there is a personal momento of the victim.

U.S. President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims at Arlington National Cemetery on November 3, 1995, and there are similar memorials at Syracuse University; Dryfesdale Cemetery, near Lockerbie; and in Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie.

Syracuse University holds a memorial week every year year called "Remembrance Week" to commemorate its lost students. Every December 21, a service is held in the university's chapel at exactly 14:03 (19:03 UTC), marking the exact moment the aircraft exploded in 1988. The university also awards university tuition fees to two students from Lockerbie Academy each year, in the form of its Lockerbie scholarship.

See also

• List of terrorist incidents
• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• UTA Flight UT-772
• Itavia Flight 870
• Tenerife disaster

References

• Emerson, Steven, and Duffy, Brian. (1990) The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, ISBN 0399135219
• Cox, Matthew, and Foster, Tom. (1992) Their Darkest Day: The Tragedy of Pan Am 103, ISBN 0802113826
• Sheridan, Geraldine, and Kenning, Thomas. (1993) Survivors: Lockerbie, Pan Books, ISBN 0330328530
• Goddard, Donald, and Coleman, Lester. (1993) Trail of the Octopus, ISBN 0451181840
• Ashton, John, and Ferguson, Ian. (2001) Cover-up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, ISBN 1840183896
• Brown, David A., "Investigators Expand Search for Debris From Bombed 747," Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 130, no. 25, pp. 26-27, January 9, 1989
• Shifrin, Carole A., "British Issue Report on Flight 103, Urge Study on Reducing Effects of Explosions," Aviation Week and Space Technology, vol. 133, no. 12, pp. 128-129, September 7, 1990
• The Scottish indictment against Megrahi and Fhimah, November 13, 1991, retrieved February 27, 2005
• The U.S. indictment against Megrahi and Fhimah, November 13, 1991, retrieved February 26, 2005
• The Scottish judges, retrieved February 26, 2005
• The verdict against Megrahi and Fhimah, issued January 31, 2001, retrieved February 26, 2005
• "No:2/90 - Boeing 747-121, N739PA, at Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland", Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report, retrieved February 27, 2005
• The position of the bomb, AAIB report, Appendix F (pdf), retrieved February 27, 2005
• "Mach stem shock wave effects", AAIB report, Appendix G (pdf), retrieved February 27, 2005
• Aviation Safety Network summary report, retrieved February 27, 2005
• Graphic of how the aircraft was destroyed, Aviation Safety Network, retrieved February 27, 2005
• [http:/www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Legal/HCJ/Lockerbie/TheCosts.htm The cost of the trial], retrieved February 26, 2005
• The judgement in Megrahi's appeal, March 14, 2002, retrieved February 26, 2005
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 731 (1992), January 21, 1992, retrieved February 26, 2005
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 748 (1992), January 21, 1992, retrieved February 26, 2005
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 883 (1993), November 11, 1993, retrieved February 26, 2005
• In-depth pages on the trial, BBC News, retrieved February 26, 2005
• "Lessons from Lockerbie, ten years later", BBC News, retrieved February 26, 2005
• The Lockerbie Trial, retrieved February 26, 2005
• Website about PA 103, no longer updated, formerly maintained by Safia Aoude, a Libyan law graduate living in Denmark, retrieved February 26, 2005
• "Pan Am 103: Why Did They Die?", by Roy Rowan, Time Magazine, April 27, 1992, retrieved February 25, 2005
• "Time Trail: Lockerbie", a collection of stories about the bombing from Time Magazine, retrieved February 25, 2005
• Information about the MST-13 timers, written by MEBO, the Swiss manufacturers, August 19, 1999, retrieved February 25, 2005
• "Lockerbie appeal hears key witness", BBC News, February 13, 2002, retrieved February 26, 2005
• "Lockerbie bomber loses appeal", BBC News, March 14, 2002, retrieved February 26, 2005
• "Lockerbie bomber to fight jail move", by Lucy Adams, The Herald, February 25, 2005, retrieved February 26, 2005
• Website set up by supporters of Megrahi, not recently updated, retrieved February 27, 2005
• Abu Nidal behind Lockerbie, says aide, CNN, August 23, 2002, retrieved February 27, 2005
• "Court told how jet's radar blip broke up at 7.02pm" by Ian Black and Gerard Seenan, May 4, 2000, The Guardian, retrieved February 28, 2005
• "Families see radar track of Flight 103's last moments", by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, October 2, 1990, retrieved February 28, 2005
• "Lockerbie, 10 years on: Reporter's reflections" by Andrew Cassel, BBC News, December 21, 1998

Further reading

• Cohen, Dan and Susan. (2000) Pan Am 103: the Bombing, the Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice, ISBN 0451202708
• Leppard, David. (1992) On the Trail of Terror
• Syracuse University Pan Am Flight 103 archive
• Syracuse College of Law Lockerbie trial website
• A PA 103 timeline, The Washington Post
• A PA 103 timeline, Syracuse University
• A private investigator's view that terrorism did not destroy PA 103
• Website about Pan Am's cargo doors