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Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing———285

all passengers before flying on, or just women and killed in the explosion was just two months old, while
children. the oldest was 82 years. All 259 passengers, hailing
Then, at about 8 P.M., the plane’s auxiliary power from 21 nations, and 11 people on the ground were
stopped working and the lights dimmed. The hijackers killed; 189 of those killed were American citizens.
rounded up passengers in a huddle in the center of the The bombing took place four months after an
plane, and when the plane turned completely dark, Iranian Airbus was shot down by the American mili-
they fired on the passengers with machine guns and tary cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes. Iranian government
grenades. Twenty-one passengers were killed and officials and Middle East terrorist groups had issued
many others were injured in this assault. threats of revenge in wake of the July 1988 Airbus dis-
Some passengers were able to force the left and aster, in which 290 people were killed. U.S. officials
right escape doors and flee the aircraft as Pakistani originally suspected that Iran had paid the Popular
commandos stormed the plane and fired on the hijack- Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Com-
ers. They killed one of the gunmen and captured the mand to carry out the bombing. The organization
other three. denied any involvement in the crime.
The United States indicted six men linked to the The Scottish investigation, which lasted three
Abu Nidal Organization in 1991 on murder charges; years, would later point to different culprits. Investi-
two U.S. citizens, Kumar and Surendra Patel, were gators sifted through 4 million pieces of wreckage,
among those killed in the attack. In late September scattered throughout 845 square miles of countryside,
2001, Pakistan released Zayd Hassan Safarini, who and cataloged more than 15,000 items of personal
had spent the past 14 years in a Pakistani jail for mur- effects. A one-pound Semtex bomb placed inside a
der in the Pan Am 73 hijacking, into U.S. custody to Toshiba radio-cassette recorder was found to have
stand trial in the United States. If convicted of all caused the disaster. The bomb was inside a brown
charges, Safarini faces a maximum penalty of death Samsonite suitcase in the plane’s cargo hold. Investi-
or life in prison. gators traced the owner of every piece of luggage on
board the flight except for the brown suitcase.
See also ABU NIDAL ORGANIZATION; SABRI AL-BANNA;
Computer records at the Frankfort airport in West
HIJACKING
Germany, where the flight originated, showed
that the brown Samsonite suitcase traveled aboard
Further Reading
Pan Am Flight 103 without an accompanying pas-
Kushner, Harvey W. Terrorism in America: A Structured senger. Investigators determined that the luggage
Approach to Understanding the Terrorist Threat. had been transferred from an Air Malta flight that
Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1998. had recently arrived in Frankfort from Malta’s Luqa
Seale, Patrick. Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire. London: Airport.
Hutchinson, 1992.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah
Fhimah both worked for the state-owned Libyan
Arab Airlines at the time of the disaster. Al-Megrahi
PAN AM FLIGHT 103 BOMBING worked as an operations manager, while Fhimah held
the position of security manager. The Libyan Arab
Airlines and Air Malta desks were located side by
On December 21, 1988, Pan American World side, and shared luggage loading belts. Inside the
Airways Flight 103 from London to New York brown suitcase that housed the Semtex bomb, investi-
exploded 31,000 ft. above the small town of Lockerbie, gators also found articles of clothing that were
Scotland, killing 270 people. The crash provoked one traced to a Malta shop. In a piece of much-contested
of the longest criminal investigations in Scottish evidence, the shop owner told investigators that he
history, and led to an eight-year diplomatic game of remembered selling the clothes to a man who resem-
cat and mouse in which the United Nations imposed bled al-Megrahi.
sanctions on Libya. The U.S. and Scotland issued an indictment in
Just after 7 P.M. that December night, the Boeing 1991 charging Libyan nationals al-Megrahi and
747 crash-landed onto the little Scottish town, destroy- Fhimah with the bombing of Pan Am 103. French
ing 21 houses in Lockerbie. The youngest person officials also announced that the two men were