On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland — 38 minutes after takeoff from London.
United States and British investigators found fragments of a circuit board and a timer, and ruled that a bomb, not mechanical failure, caused the explosion.
The attack had killed 270 people — 259 people on board the airliner, along with 11 on the ground — as the bomb detonated over the Scottish town as it flew from London to New York.
It remains the deadliest terrorist attack to have taken place in the United Kingdom
Libyans Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah were tried for the bombing. They were accused of placing explosives in a portable cassette and radio player that was inside a suitcase on the plane. Megrahi was sentenced in 2001 to 27 years in prison, but was released from prison after being diagnosed with cancer. He died in 2012. Fhimah was acquitted.
Two years ago, the US charged a Libyan man, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, for his alleged involvement in making the bomb that destroyed the flight. He is now in US custody.
Note:- (Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor. The content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.))
