Lockerbie stop

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PanAm Flight 103
The Boeing 747-121 "Clipper Maid of the Seas" in March 1987
Accident summary
Accident type	Bomb attack
place	Lockerbie , Scotland
date	December 21, 1988
Fatalities	270 (11 of them on the ground)
Survivors	0
Injured	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 747-121A
operator	Pan American World Airways
Mark	N739PA
Departure airport	London Heathrow Airport
Destination airport	John F. Kennedy International Airport
Passengers	243
crew	16
Lists of aviation accidents

The Lockerbie bombing was a bomb attack on a commercial airliner of type Boeing 747-121 of the US airline Pan American World Airways ( Pan Am flight 103 ) on 21st December 1988 .

According to the judgment of Scottish criminal courts, the attack was an act of state terrorism by Libyan intelligence agents. The aircraft was destroyed at an altitude of approximately 9,400 m above the village of Lockerbie , Dumfries and Galloway , Scotland after the explosion of 340 to 450 g of plastic explosives . In the accident, all 259 occupants of the machine and eleven residents of Lockerbies were killed on the ground. The act was largely seen as an attack on a symbol of the United States ; With 189 dead Americans, it was considered the most costly attack against civilians from the United States until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 .

Libya has never admitted any involvement in the attack, but in negotiations to settle its conflicts with the US agreed to declare that it "accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials". It has paid $ 2.46 billion in compensation to the survivors of the victims to date. According to his Justice Minister, who resigned in the wake of the uprising in Libya in 2011 , however, Libya's then ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie assassination attempt in 1988. “I can prove that Gaddafi gave the order for Lockerbie,” Mustafa Abdel Jalil told the Swedish newspaper “Expressen” in February 2011.

The only conviction in the case came in 2001 in the so-called Lockerbie Trial, when a Scottish court sentenced Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to life imprisonment. Due to an incurable end-stage prostate cancer and the associated very low life expectancy, Megrahi was released early from Scottish custody on August 20, 2009. Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill gave humanitarian reasons for the move. As it became known in 2010, there was also economic motivation for Megrahi's release from prison.

Memorial plaque at Lockerbie

In March 2019 it became known that Scottish authorities had questioned former members of the GDR's Ministry for State Security as witnesses, as there were indications that they were involved in the attack.

The Helsinki warning

Section of the CIA document on the Helsinki Warning, German translation: “An anonymous caller told a US diplomatic agency in Europe on December 5 that a bomb attack on a Pan-Am aircraft departing from Frankfurt, West Germany in the US flies would be perpetrated. The Federal Aviation Administration was informed of the threat and security measures for Pan-Am flights from Frankfurt were increased. "

CIA document on previous warnings

On December 5, the FAA issued a security bulletin stating that the same day a man with an Arabic accent had called the US embassy in Helsinki and announced that there would be a Pan-Am flight from within the next two weeks Frankfurt would be blown up in the US by members of the Abu Nidal organization ; a Finnish woman would unwittingly carry the bomb on board. Ultimately, the caller's time was off by two days.

The warning was taken seriously by the US government. The State Department sent the security message to dozens of embassies. The FAA sent them out to all airlines, including Pan Am, which then charged a $ 5 security surcharge on each passenger and promised a security policy that would scrutinize passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage, and aircraft with relentless thoroughness. The security team in Frankfurt only found the message one day after the disaster under a pile of papers. In addition, a Frankfurt security employee who was responsible for detecting explosives under X-rays reported that she did not know the Semtex explosives used until she was interviewed by ABC eleven months after the attack .

On December 13, the warning was published in the US embassy in Moscow and passed on to all Americans - including journalists and business people - staying there. This led some to rebooking on flights from other companies. The places that have now become free on PA103 were filled from the waiting list at short notice.

Pan American World Airways Flight 103 (PA103)

PA103 , for Pan-Am flight 103, was the flight number of the Pan Am's third daily transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to Kennedy Airport in New York at the time . On December 21, 1988, the route was flown by a Boeing 747-121 with the aircraft registration number N739PA and the nickname "Clipper Maid of the Seas" .

The daily flight connection PA103 already started in Frankfurt with a Boeing 727 for the route to Heathrow. At that time it was a peculiarity of the airlines Pan Am and TWA to offer different flights under the same flight number. Flight PA103 could be booked as a direct connection Frankfurt-New York, although a change in London had to be made. 47 of the 89 passengers on the first section of PA103 changed there to the Boeing 747, which was supposed to continue the flight to New York. The 747 had arrived in the morning as flight PA124 from San Francisco and was parked in parking lot K-14 at Terminal 3. During its two-hour stay, the machine was guarded by Pan Am's security company, Alert Security.

On its last flight there were 243 passengers and 16 crew members in the jumbo jet, while the pilots Captain James MacQuarrie and First Officer Raymond Wagner and flight engineer Jerry Avritt sat in the cockpit . The British Mary Geraldine Murphy (51) was employed as chief stewardess (senior purser). The cabin crew stationed at Heathrow also included: Siv Ulla Engström (51), Elisabeth Nichole Avoyne-Clemens (44), Noëlle Lydie Campbell-Berti (41), Elke Etha Kühne (43), Maria Nieves Larracoechea (39), Irja Syhnove Skabo (38), Paul Isaac Garrett (41), Milutin Velimirovich (35), Lilibeth Tobila Macalolooy (27), Jocelyn Reina (26), Myra Josephine Royal (30), and Stacie Denise Franklin (20). The flight attendants on flight PA103 alone came from ten nations and commuted from all over Europe and the USA. Cabin crew members have served Pan Am between nine months and 28 years.

Last contact with flight 103

The flight was scheduled to take off at 6 p.m., but was only pushed off the gate at 6:04 p.m. and took off 25 minutes late (not unusual during rush hour) from runway 27L at 6:25 p.m., after which the aircraft headed northwest departed from Heathrow on the so-called Daventry departure route. After the Boeing 747 had left the airport behind, the pilots headed north towards Scotland. The aircraft reached the border at 6:56 p.m. and had reached its cruising altitude of 9,400 m here . Captain MacQuarrie reduced thrust to cruise level as intended .

At 7 p.m. PA103 was taken over by the Scottish air surveillance center in Prestwick , where clearance for the flight across the Atlantic had to be obtained. When they flew into Scottish airspace, Alan Topp, the air traffic controller in charge , made contact with the pilots.

Captain MacQuarrie replied, “Good evening Scottish, Clipper one zero three. We are at level three one zero. " (Good evening, Scottish (short for" Scottish Control ") , Clipper one zero three. We are at flight level three one zero.)

Then copilot Wagner said: “Clipper one zero three, requesting oceanic clearance.” (Clipper one zero three, we request ocean clearance.)

This was the last sign of life aboard the 747.

The explosion

At 7:01 p.m. the Scottish air traffic controller Alan Topp saw PA103 approach the corner of the Solway Firth and at 7:02 p.m. fly over its north coast. The aircraft was shown as a small green square with a cross in the middle and the transponder code on the radar screen, the code was 0357 . In addition, important information about the course, altitude and speed of the aircraft was displayed. The last display on his screen that he received from the 747 showed him that it was on course 316 ° and was flying at a speed of 580 km / h (313 kts CAS ). A later analysis by Scottish authorities showed a course of 321 ° and a speed of 804 km / h (434 kts ground speed ).

Around this time the aircraft was destroyed by an explosion of 340 to 450 g of plastic explosives at an altitude of about 9,400 m above the town of Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland . The explosion tore a 0.5 m wide hole in the left side of the fuselage , a few meters below the P in the Pan-Am lettering.

Inside the aircraft, the force of the explosion shattered the thin wall between the forward cargo hold and a space in front of it in the direction of flight. This room contains, among other things, electronic devices that are connected to navigation and communication systems in the cockpit. Some of these systems were also destroyed in the explosion. The front part of the torso began to move uncontrollably. These strong movements caused the remaining connections to the rest of the fuselage to break and the entire front part broke away.

At the same time, direct pressure waves from the explosion met waves already reflected from the rear fuselage. This resulted in further damage to the hull. Part of the roof above the explosion was torn off. The strength of the explosion was further increased by the abrupt equalization of the pressure difference between the interior of the aircraft and the surroundings. The pressure inside the pressurized cabin was about four times as high as outside the machine.

The machine disintegrated very quickly. Investigators from a British agency said that the nose of the aircraft (nose section with cockpit) separated from the rest within three seconds of the explosion, dragging one of the four engines with it. The fuselage and wings continued to fly until it sank to an altitude of 6,000 m. At this point he fell almost vertically to the ground. In free fall, the hull broke apart into smaller pieces.

At 19:02 and 47 seconds, PA103 disappeared from the radar screen . Topp tried to contact Captain MacQuarrie and asked a nearby KLM flight to do the same, but both attempts were unsuccessful. At first, Topp thought that the machine had flown into a so-called zone of silence, a “dead” area from which no or faulty radar signals could be received. Where previously there was a green square on the radar screen, four appeared, and after a few seconds the squares began to disperse further. A comparison of the flight recorder with the radar recordings showed that the wreckage had a spread of 2 km after just eight seconds.

The first of the fuselage parts - about a minute after the explosion - hit the wing section with 91,000 kg of fuel and a speed of 825 km / h in Sherwood Crescent, a district of Lockerbie. A seismograph nearby detected a shock with a magnitude of 1.6 on the Richter scale . The kerosene ignited and the huge fire destroyed several houses. The fire was so intense that nothing was left of the left wing. Based on the number of screws found, it was later found out that both wings had hit there.

Even the nearby British Airways pilot Captain Robin Chamberlain radioed Topp that he could see a large fire on the ground. Meanwhile, the destruction continued on his screen, which was now full of bright squares, all moving eastward with the wind.

Immediately before the explosion, the machine had flown over the Chapelcross nuclear power plant , which is 16 kilometers south of Lockerbie. Since only two years before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had happened, thought many residents of Lockerbie, first, it was a meltdown came in the power plant.

Victim

nationality	Passover gers	crew	On the ground	overall , including
Argentina	002			002
Belgium	001			001
Bolivia	001			001
Canada	003			003
France	002	01		003
Germany	003	01		004th
Hungary	004th			004th
India	003			003
Ireland	003			003
Israel	001			001
Italy	002			002
Jamaica	001			001
Japan	001			001
Philippines	001			001
South Africa	001			001
Spain		01		001
Sweden	002	01		003
Switzerland	001			001
Trinidad and Tobago	001			001
United Kingdom	031	01	11	043
United States	179	11		190
Total	243	16	11	270

Passengers and crew

All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed in the crash. A Scottish investigative body announced that when the cockpit broke away, extremely strong air currents whipped through the fuselage, ripping clothing off passengers and turning objects like drinks carts into deadly projectiles.

Due to the sudden change in pressure, the gases within the body expanded to four times its volume, causing many to overextend or collapse the lungs . Unbelted passengers or unsecured objects were thrown out of the aircraft into cold air at −46 ° C and fell for about two minutes from a height of 9 km towards the ground. Others stayed in their seats and opened to Lockerbie while still buckled up.

Most of the machine's occupants passed out from the lack of oxygen during the fall, but coroners believe some regained consciousness when they reached more oxygenated layers of air. Pathologist William G. Eckert, who examined the results of the autopsies, told Scottish police that he believed the cockpit crew, some flight attendants and 147 other passengers survived both the bomb explosion and the subsequent decompression and only died from the impact. Neither of them showed any signs of injury from the explosion, pressure drop, or the Boeing 747 breakup. A mother was found holding her baby, two friends were holding hands, and a number of passengers were clutching crucifixes.

Captain MacQuarrie, the first officer, the flight engineer, a flight attendant and some first class passengers were found still buckled in the aircraft nose after it hit a field near Lockerbie. A flight attendant and a man were found alive but died before help could be called. The investigation found that the man might have survived had he been found earlier. In addition, victims were found in wooded areas whose seats were caught in the trees. Some of the victims had no fatal injuries, but were not found until two days after the crash. So if the victims survived the crash, they later probably died of hypothermia .

Lockerbie residents

Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway , Scotland

Eleven people died on the ground in Lockerbie when the wing section hit part of the fuselage. Several houses were buried under the wing and 21 others were so badly damaged in the explosion that they later had to be demolished. Four members of a family, Jack and Rosalind Somerville and their children Paul and Lynsey, died when the kerosene exploded their house. A huge ball of fire grew over the houses and moved towards the nearby freeway.

In the days that followed, residents lived in the face of rubble and corpses, while forensic experts took photos and marked the positions in order to be able to reconstruct the exact location and strength of the explosion in the plane. They coordinated information about each passenger's seat number, the type of injuries and the location where they were hit.

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

“There was a boy at the end of the stairs to the street, a young guy with brown socks and blue pants. 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 sheep's wool travel blanket and thought I would keep him warm with it. Two other dead children lay across the street, one of them hunched over a garden fence. However, it looked as if they were sleeping. The boy lay at the bottom of my stairs for days. Every time I went to my house to get clothes, it was still there. 'My boy is still there,' I kept telling the waiting policeman. In the end I couldn't take it anymore on Saturday. 'You have to take the boy away,' I said to the police officer. He was taken away that night. "

Although instructed by their government not to do so, many family members, mostly from the United States, came to Lockerbie to identify their relatives. Lockerbie volunteers organized canteens that stayed open around the clock, where bereaved relatives, soldiers, police officers and social workers could find sandwiches, hot meals, coffee and someone to talk to for free. The women in town washed, dried and ironed every item of clothing they could find in order to return as many items as possible to loved ones after the police deemed them no longer essential for the forensic investigation. BBC Scottish correspondent Andrew Cassel reported on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy that local residents opened their hearts and their homes to loved ones, endured their own losses bravely and with tremendous dignity , and continued the relationships they forged to this day.

People who missed PA103

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

After the bombing, there were various reports of people being booked on PA103 but missing it for various reasons.

The Four Tops wanted to return to the US for Christmas, but because they left the recording studio too late, they missed the flight. Annoyed by the missed flight, news of the explosion reached her just as they were arguing about it.

The Sex Pistols singer John Lydon and his wife Nora also narrowly escaped the accident: “We only missed the flight because Nora hadn't packed in time. When we realized what had happened, we just looked at each other and almost collapsed. "

Others who are certain or suspected to have been booked on PA103 but previously canceled or rebooked their reservation are: Roelof "Pik" Botha , then Foreign Minister of South Africa ; He was traveling to a UN ceremony in New York to sign the Namibian independence agreement ( Bent Carlsson , UN envoy for South Africa, who was traveling for the same ceremony, died on board), John Thomas McCarthy , US Ambassador to Lebanon ; Chris Revell, then Vice Director of the FBI ; and Steven Greene, administrative officer in the DEA office . Jennifer Rush said she was booked for this flight. Due to a last-minute rebooking , she then flew back to New York with Lufthansa.

These (alleged) cancellations of tickets by people in public gave rise to rumors that intelligence agencies had more detailed warnings about the impending assassination attempt.

After the crash

Investigations

The black box was found by police on the first day after the attack. There was no indication of a distant distress signal on it, but the explosion could be heard for 180 milliseconds, after which the recording stopped. While the cockpit and the bodies of the crew were still in Lockerbie, FAA investigators examined it. They concluded that no emergency measures had been taken: the switches for the pressurized cabin and the fuel were in the normal position. The crew had also not used their oxygen masks .

Calls to confess

According to a CIA analysis of December 22, 1988, shortly after the attack, there were several groups who claimed to be responsible:

• A male caller said that the group "Protectors of the Islamic Revolution" destroyed the plane in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian plane ( IA655 ) by the US Navy .
• A caller who said he was representing the organization “Islamic Jihad ” claimed that his organization carried out the attack to “ celebrate Christmas ”.
• Allegedly, the "Ulster Defense League" is said to have announced the attack by telephone.
• An anonymous caller claimed that the plane was destroyed by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad .

At the end of this list, the author noted: “So far we consider the confession of the 'protectors of the Islamic revolution' to be the most credible.” In conclusion, he writes: “So far we have not been able to give any group responsibility for this tragedy. We expect, as often happens, that many groups will profess their responsibility. "

The investigations

The Lockerbie disaster triggered the largest British criminal investigation, curiously directed by the smallest British police agency, the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary .

The first investigations by the Dumfries and Galloway police at the scene included military and civilian investigations from helicopters, the analysis of satellite images and the combing of the area by hundreds of soldiers and police officers. More than 10,000 pieces of debris were collected, marked and entered into a tracing system.

The fuselage of the aircraft was reconstructed by aircraft accident investigators, and the 0.5 m hole created by the explosion in the forward cargo hold was discovered. The examination of the baggage containers revealed that the explosion must have taken place in the container closest to the hole. A series of test explosions, in which the damage was compared, was used to determine the exact location and amount of the explosive. According to this, about 300 grams of the Semtex plastic explosive detonated .

Parts of a Samsonite suitcase, which presumably contained the bomb, were recovered along with parts of a Toshiba radio recorder (type RT-8016 / SF16 BomBeat), of which a similar model had been confiscated by the German police two months earlier from a Palestinian terrorist group had been. In this case, too, it was used to build a Semtex bomb. The contents of the suitcase also included baby clothes that could be determined to have been made in Malta .

The clothes were taken to a Maltese trader, Toni Gauci, who became the main prosecution witness after testifying that he sold the clothes to a man of Libyan appearance. He later identified him as Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi .

A fragment of a circuit board that was found in the case was identified as part of an MST-13 timer, which was only manufactured in small numbers by the Swiss company Mebo AG . The same model was found on two Libyan secret agents arrested in Senegal in February 1988. This lead the investigators to the Libyan military.

The investigators also found out that an unaccompanied suitcase reached Frankfurt via a luggage transport system from Luqa Airport in Malta and was loaded onto feeder 727 there. This piece of luggage was shown as a bomb case during the trial.

After three years of joint investigations by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the FBI, in which 15,000 witnesses were heard, murder charges against Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and security chief of Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Chalifah Fhimah, the LAA site manager at Malta International Airport .

Motive for the terrorist attack

Libya has never admitted any involvement in the attack, but in negotiations to settle its conflicts with the US agreed to declare that it "accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials". Other reports say Libya assumed full responsibility for the attack in 2002. The reason and motive were evidently the bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986. On April 15 and 16, 1986, US warplanes launched a series of air raids from England : Operation El Dorado Canyon . The first US air strikes from Great Britain since World War II were directed against Tripoli and Benghazi , Libya , in retaliation for an attack on the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin on the night of April 4-5, 1986 , in which three people were killed and 229 injured, including many US soldiers. This attack, in turn, was in retaliation for the sinking of two Libyan warships by the United States . According to the Libyan government, Hana Gaddafi , a girl adopted by Muammar al-Gaddafi, was among the dozen dead in the air strikes . However, there is evidence that Hana Gaddafi's death was faked for propaganda purposes . Allegedly, Gaddafi swore that whoever killed his daughter would suffer a similar loss. Michael MacQuarrie was one of the pilots in the US retaliatory attack on April 15, 1986 - and therefore responsible for the death of Gaddafi's adopted daughter. The captain of PanAm Flight 103, James Bruce MacQuarrie, was the father of Michael MacQuarrie.

The process from 2000

The United Nations Security Council (UNO) demanded Libya to extradite the two alleged assassins who belonged to the Libyan secret service. You should be tried in a Scottish court. UN sanctions against Libya and long negotiations with the Libyan head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi ultimately led to the two accused being extradited to the Scottish police. Libya only accepted a third state, the Netherlands, as the venue for the trial. A court was therefore set up near Utrecht which met under Scottish law .

The transfer took place on April 5, 1999 at a neutral location in the Netherlands. On May 3, 2000, the trial (Lockerbie Trial HMA ./. Megrahi and Fhimah, Case 1475/99) against the Libyans Lamin Chalifah Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi began . Fhimah was acquitted.

Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on January 31, 2001, which he served in Greenock Prison near Glasgow until he was pardoned in August 2009 . His appeal in Scotland was denied and the European Court of Human Rights also dismissed it as inadmissible.

In September 2003, Megrahi asked the Scottish authorities to retrial. In the following two years, his case was reopened by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). In 2006 he was given the opportunity to apply for a new appeal.

In November 2005, legal scholar Robert Black , who worked out the Scottish composition of the trial court in Camp Zeist , The Netherlands , stated : “The SCCRC is conducting its investigations with a view to the case on which the judgment is appealed regardless of whether Megrahi (in Libya) will be naturalized again and an application should be made to discontinue all proceedings against him. British relatives of the Lockerbie victims have already made representations to the SCCRC, which is bound by its statutes, whose statements are taken into account in its decision-making. ” Professor Black is convinced that now that the special provisions of the (previous) Lockerbie process have expired , competent criminal judges in the High Court in Edinburgh would suffice on the appeal stage. He is assuming that the court will appoint five or - if five judges were responsible in the first appeal instance in the Lockerbie trial - seven ordinary judges in a new appellate instance, at the end of 2006 at the earliest. It will not be possible to appoint a judge as presiding judge who has dealt with the Lockerbie case in the first or second instance.

On May 4, 2006, the Scottish government announced that a five-member judge's senate based in Edinburgh had scheduled a hearing on July 11, 2006 on Megrahi's appeal against his 27-year minimum sentence. The public prosecutor's office ( Lord Advocate Lord Boyd of Duncansby ) will presumably submit that the sentence imposed is too mild. Lawyers and relatives of the Lockerbie victims, among others, have expressed concern about the schedule of this appeal process. They welcome any type of appeal process that should be decided by the SCCRC to be heard in court. A spokesman for this group said:

"There may be an instantaneous referral back by the SCCRC - or not"

Megrahi's attorneys later insisted that both appeals (against the guilty verdict and the amount of the sentence) take place in the Scottish Special Court in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, before which his trial in first and second instance had taken place. Scottish authorities objected to safety and cost reasons. However, on June 8, 2006 , the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal decided to postpone the hearing on the requested appeal to October (instead of July) 2006. This three-month postponement allows both the prosecution and the defense more time to deal with the Jurisdiction issue and whether the SCCRC will grant Megrahi a second appeal.

Al-Megrahi was pardoned in 2009

On August 20, 2009, Scotland's Justice Minister pardoned the now 57-year-old Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi "for humanitarian reasons" and released him prematurely because al-Megrahi was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and would soon die. Doctors would have given him only three months to live. On his return to Libya, al-Megrahi was celebrated at the airport in Tripoli and received with congratulations by the Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi . This sparked outrage, especially in the USA, and the US government regretted the decision of the Scottish authorities. Al-Megrahi then lived in a villa in Libya. He died in May 2012, almost three years after his release from prison.

Documents published on WikiLeaks indicate that the real reason for his release was that Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi threatened Britain with severing all trade.

Severance payments from Libya in 2002

On May 29, 2002, Libya offered $ 2.7 billion in compensation for the 270 deaths, representing $ 10 million in severance pay per family. The offer provided:

• Transfer 40% of the money if the 1999 UN sanctions against Libya were lifted;
• another 40% if US trade sanctions are lifted; and
• the last 20% when the US State Department removed Libya from the list of terrorist supporting states.

Jim Kreindler of the New York law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, which coordinated the deal, said:

“This is new territory. It is the first time that one of the states that are considered terrorist supporting states offered compensation payments to the families of the victims of terrorism. "

The U.S. State Department claimed it wasn't directly involved:

"Some families want money, others say it's blood money ."

The compensation payments to the families of the PA103 victims were one of the steps called for by the UN to lift the sanctions against Libya. Other demands included a formal rejection of terrorism and acceptance of responsibility for the actions of Libyan secret agents. Eighteen months later, on December 5, 2003, Jim Kreindler revealed that his law firm had received approximately $ 1 million contingency fee from each family they represent. Ultimately, the fee was $ 300 million and Kreindler said:

“For the past seven years we have had our own team that has worked tirelessly for this case and we deserve the fee we worked so hard for. I believe that it is a reasonable price-performance ratio for the relatives. "

Another US law firm, Speizer Crowse, which represented 60 family members, half of whom were British, had an agreed contingency fee of between 28% and 35% of individual severance pay. Frank Greneda from Spizer Crowse said:

“Of course the fees in the US are higher than anywhere else, but nobody questioned them during the negotiations. Only now that we are approaching a solution do we hear criticism. "

On August 15, 2003, the UN representative for Libya, Ahmed Own, submitted a letter to the UN Security Council in which Libya formally assumed responsibility for the actions of its officials in relation to the Lockerbie disaster. The Libyan government then paid a severance payment of $ 8 million to each family (approximately 2.5 million of which were paid to the law firms). As a result, both UN sanctions and US trade sanctions were lifted. Another 2 million dollars would have gone to the families after the US State Department removed Libya from the list of terrorist supporting states. This did not happen, however, and in April Libya took the remaining $ 540 million back from the Swiss escrow account , through which the first $ 2.16 billion had already been transferred to the families. With the US announcement on May 15, 2006 that it would resume diplomatic relations with Libya and remove it from the controversial list, the inevitable question arises whether Libya will now pay the remainder of the compensation previously offered.

Portions of this article appear since 2006 is out of date to be .
Please help to research and insert the missing information .

Some observers believe that accepting responsibility was more like a business deal with the aim of lifting the sanctions, rather than admitting guilt. In February 2004 the Libyan prime minister said Shukri Ghanem the BBC that the compensation was paid as a "price for peace" and as a step towards the lifting of sanctions. When asked whether Libya did not take the blame, he said: "I agree." Gaddafi later retracted Ghanim's testimony under pressure from Washington and London .

A civil case against Libya in the interests of Pan Am is still ongoing. The airline went bankrupt not least because of the attack, it lost 4.5 billion US dollars due to the loss of the aircraft and the resulting consequences for civil aviation.

In October 2005 it was reported that the British, American and Libyan governments were negotiating the transfer of Megrahi to a prison in Libya on condition that he would not appeal again. The original sentence called for him to serve his entire sentence in Scotland. The fact that such an agreement is being considered at all shows that the US and England preferred not to see the case reopened, as a successful appeal would likely worsen tensions with Libya.

The afterword of the US President's commission of inquiry

On September 22, 1989, President Bush appointed former Labor Secretary Ann McLaughlin Korologos to chair an investigative committee of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to re-examine PA103 and to recommend aviation safety strategies in light of the incident. She and her team of six submitted the report with 64 recommendations in May 1990. She also handed the president a sealed envelope, believed to have not blamed Libya alone for the disaster, but divided it up. The report ended with the words:

“National will and the moral courage to enforce it are the utmost means of combating terrorism. The Commission recommends tougher policies that not only prosecute and punish terrorists, but also make countries that support terrorism atone for their actions. "

Appeal procedures and alternative theories about perpetrators and backgrounds

Despite the conviction of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and the payment of around 2.7 billion US dollars by Libya, there are doubts about the real guilt of the Libyan state and its intelligence officer.

There are considerable concerns about the most important piece of evidence, a fingernail-sized circuit board fragment of an MST-13 electronic time switch from Mebo AG from Zurich , which was used to detonate the bomb. Although switches of this type were found in the arrest of two Libyan intelligence officials, but the Mebo AG supplied, for example, thus the Stasi of East Germany , which in turn had good contacts with Palestinian organizations.

What is unusual about the circuit board fragment associated with the attack is the fact that the letter "M" was scratched on it. Mebo explained that the fragment found was part of a prototype that was not fully functional and that it was therefore not possible to detonate a bomb with it.

The location of the circuit board in a wooded area also cast doubt on the authenticity of the evidence. The court entrusted with the process found on record the statements of the Scottish police about the location: "In the worst case, evasive and extremely confusing." Today, experts assume that at the altitude of around 9000 meters and the wind conditions prevailing at the time, light parts flew much further and thus the board fragment should have landed in the North Sea.

According to the BKA, there is no evidence that the bomb reached London from Malta via Frankfurt am Main. In addition to Frankfurt, passengers and luggage came from a further twelve airports on PanAm flight 103.

However, there is the well-known "Neuss theory". In addition, Carl-Ludwig Paeschke from the ZDF editorial team 'Contemporary History':

“In Neuss there was a workshop of the front for the liberation of Palestine, which installed bombs in radios - as in the Lockerbie case. When the Federal Criminal Police Office excavated the workshop as part of Operation Herbstlaub, four of them were found. Allegedly there should have been a fifth, and this should have been the PanAm bomb. "

Operation Herbstlaub was a joint action by BKA, BND and the Protection of the Constitution against a PFLP-GC cell active in the Federal Republic . On October 26, 1988, 16 suspected terrorists were arrested during raids in several German cities:

“During Operation Autumn Leaves, police from a special task force and terrorism investigators struck. They arrested 16 suspects but released twelve, including the bomb maker Khreesat. He let the wires glow and assured: 'I'm one of you.' While disarming the infernal machines of his 'colleague', a BKA man was killed, another was seriously injured, and a bomb was missing. 'The key to identifying the real perpetrators lies in Neuss,' explained Dr. David Thomas Schiller on request, expert on terrorism and the Middle East. "

Twenty years later, the son of the Libyan head of state Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi confirmed that Libya with its 2.7 billion US dollars only wanted to buy itself free from UN sanctions :

“We wrote a letter to the UN Security Council that we are responsible for the actions of our people. But that doesn't mean that we were too. ... I admit we played with words. We had to. There was no other way. "

Another track, which has so far been officially rejected, leads to Iran. The attack could have been in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane on July 3, 1988 by a US warship (see Iran Air flight 655 ). In this context, the defected former employee of the Iranian secret service Abolgashem Mesbahi confirmed that Iran was the driving force behind the attack. However, Abolgashem Mesbahi has not yet been heard by any court on Lockerbie. Vincent Cannistraro's statement in November 1990 was very informative:

"President Hashemi Rafsanjani has commissioned the bombing of the [Pan Am 103] jet in the summer of 1988, when he was the Speaker of Parliament. We know who did. From an intelligence point of view, the case is solved. (' President Hashemi Rafsanjani ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 flight in the summer of 1988 when he was speaker of parliament. We know who (it) did. From the perspective of the intelligence services, the case is solved. ') - Vincent Cannistraro , Head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, Nov. 21, 1990. "

Ali Akbar Mohtashami (Ayatollah Mohtashami) , a member of the Iranian government, paid US $ 10 million for the bomb attack on PA103, according to a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency . The attack should be seen as retaliation for the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus by the USA:

"Ayatollah Mohtashemi: (...) and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus. ( and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for US downing Iranian Airbus ) "

Due to an ongoing appeal, the evidence is being re-examined.

Former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abd al-Jalil , who turned away from ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi during the revolution in February 2011 , is quoted in the Swedish newspaper Expressen . He said he had evidence that Ghadhafi gave the order to attack Lockerbie.

A US journalist believes, after years of investigative research, to have found out the identity of the person who built the bombs for the attacks on both the “La Belle” nightclub in Berlin in 1986 and the plane supported by Lockerbie. Abu Agila Mas'ud was an intelligence officer under Ghaddafi; he was on trial in Tripoli in autumn 2015 for crimes against the people of Libya. There he was also accused of building bombs that were used against opposition activists.

As early as 1989, an FBI director told a committee of the US Congress that the evidence gathered by his agency and the NSA indicated the Syrian-based PFLP-GC as the perpetrator.

Memorials

Memorial at Syracuse University, New York

There are a number of private and public memorials for the PA103 victims. Dark Elegy is the work of the sculptor Susan Lowenstein, whose then 21-year-old son was a passenger on the flight. The work consists of 43 statues of naked women: wives and mothers who lost their child or husband.

US President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial tower at Arlington National Cemetery to the victims in 1995 . There are also memorials at Syracuse University , at Dryfesdale Cemetery, near Lockerbie, in Moffat and in Lockerbie itself. As a memorial, there is the Garden of Remembrance in Lockerbie Cemetery .

A service is held at Syracuse University every year on December 21 at 2:03 p.m. (7:03 p.m. Scottish time), the time of the explosion, to commemorate the 35 students who died. In addition, the university awards two so-called “Lockerbie Scholarships” each year to students at the Lockerbie Academy.

Documentation

• The Lockerbie attack. Mayday - cockpit alarm (season 7, episode 2). German premiere: July 9, 2009
• Lockerbie Revisited. Arte , Netherlands 2009
• Death flight Pan Am 103 - The Mystery of Lockerbie. Arte , Germany 2013
• Lockerbie's riddle. ZDF History Germany 2014
• Pan Am Flight 103 - The announced disaster. Mirror story . USA 2015

See also

• List of attacks on commercial aircraft

literature

• David Johnston: Lockerbie: The Real Story Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1989 ( ISBN 0-7475-0487-3 )
• Steven Emerson, Brian Duffy: The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation Putnam Pub Group (T), 1990 ( ISBN 0-399-13521-9 )
• John Crawford: The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale Trafford Publishing, 2002 ( ISBN 1-55369-806-1 )
• Hans Köchler and Jason Subler (Eds.): The Lockerbie Trial. Documents Related to the IPO Observer Mission International Progress Organization, 2002 ( ISBN 3-900704-21-X )
• Khalil I. Matar, Robert W. Thabit: Lockerbie and Libya: A Study in International Relations McFarland & Company, 2003 ( ISBN 0-7864-1609-2 )
• Karen Spies: Pan Am Flight 103: Terrorism Over Lockerbie Enslow Publishers, 2003 ( ISBN 0-7660-1788-5 )

Web links

Commons : PanAm-Flug 103  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Picture of the Pan Am accident machine 'Clipper Maid of the Seas', taken in January 1984 in Miami / Florida (Photographer: Bob Garrad)
• Compilation of the first "Newsflash" news and a special on the evening of the crash, broadcast by ITN during and after the late- night film Magnum Force with Clint Eastwood
• 20 years ago - the Lockerbie tragedy (report on Austrian Wings - Austria's aviation magazine)
• El Megrahi - the pawn sacrifice of the Lockerbie tragedy? (Report on Austrian Wings - Austria's aviation magazine)
• Timeline of events (english)
• Cache of the PA103 page ( Memento from December 6, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
• Full pages on the Lockerbie stop
• WDR deadline for the Lockerbie stop
• Robert Fisk : Do you know the truth about Lockerbie? October 13, 2007

Lockerbie process

• The Scottish Court Service website with download option ( Memento from November 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) of the two main decisions of the Lockerbie trial; Judgment ( RTF, 195 KB ( Memento from June 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ); PDF, 135 KB ( Memento from December 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )) and appeal decision from 2002 ( RTF, 627 KB ( Memento from 15 December 2012 ) . June 2006 in the Internet Archive ); PDF, 1,018 KB ( Memento from June 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive )) (English)
• Reports from UN-nominated observer to the Lockerbie trial, Dr. Hans Kochler
• BBC website on the Lockerbie trial with video and audio recordings of the trial in The Hague (navigation: English; material: real video and real audio streams; predominantly English, testimonies in other languages, partly synchronized, partly subtitled)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Aircraft Accident Report No 2/90 (EW / C1094) ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, English; 78 kB)
2. ↑ tagesschau.de ( Memento from July 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ Ghadhafi threatens London , NZZ Online. December 9, 2010. 
4. ↑ Scotland has Stasi employees questioned , tagesschau.de of March 21, 2019, accessed on April 27, 2019.
5. ↑ Jim Arkedis: Explaining the Europe Terror Alert , Progressive Policy Institute, May 10, 2010, accessed April 27, 2019.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Carina Tietz: The crash of the PAN AM 103 over Lockerbie , carina-tietz.de from March 14, 2014, accessed on April 27, 2019
7. ^ Series of three graphics on the course of the explosion ( memento of May 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) in the Aviation Safety Network
8. ↑ Court told how jet's radar blip broke up at 7.02pm , The Guardian. May 4, 2000. 
9. ↑ BBC-NEWS Special Report: "Scotland Correspondent Andrew Cassel looks back on the night that put Lockerbie on the international map."
10. ↑ ABC News Prime Time Live, November 30, 1989
11. ↑ Sex Pistol recounts Lockerbie near miss , The Guardian. February 23, 2004. 
12. ↑ Obituary: LOST ON FLIGHT 103: A HERO TO THE WRETCHED OF THE WORLD, by MICHAEL HARRINGTON. Archived from the original on December 14, 2007 ; accessed on October 1, 2014 .  Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times on December 26, 1988
13. ↑ Interview in the ZDF program “Volle Kanne” on March 5, 2010
14. ↑ foia.cia.gov ( Memento from February 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
15. ↑ foia.cia.gov ( Memento from February 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
16. ↑ Flashback: The Berlin disco bombing , BBC. November 13, 2001. 
17. ↑ The Secret of Hana Gaddafi , World on Sunday . August 7, 2011. 
18. ↑ The secret life of Hana Gaddafi , Welt Online . August 28, 2011. 
19. ^ Plea of ​​the joint plaintiff's representative, lawyer Andreas Schulz. Archived from the original on January 8, 2005 ; accessed on October 1, 2014 .  in the second trial before the Berlin district court for the bomb attack on the La Belle discotheque
20. ↑ Lockerbie bomb appeal lined up for summer , The Scotsman. May 5, 2006. Archived from the original on October 23, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2019. 
21. ↑ bomber bids for £ 1m return to Dutch court , The Scotsman. June 9, 2006. Archived from the original on October 17, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2019. 
22. ↑ Deathly ill Lockerbie assassin pardoned article on stern.de from August 20, 2009
23. ↑ Gaddafi receives pardoned Lockerbie assassin , article on welt.de. August 22, 2009. 
24. ↑ cf. Lockerbie assassin is released early at focus.de, August 20, 2009
25. ↑ Released Lockerbie bomber struggles with death , article in Zeit-Online from August 29, 2011, accessed: August 29, 2011
26. ↑ Lockerbie assassin Megrahi is dead , article in Spiegel-Online from May 20, 2012, accessed: May 20, 2012
27. ^ "He (The British Ambassador) noted that a refusal of Megrahi's request could have had disastrous implications for British interests in Libya." Quoting from Section 3 of the Confidential Telegram ( Memento of October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) by Joan Polaschik , the Deputy Head of Mission from the US Embassy in Tripoli August 16, 2009 a. a. to Washington, published by WikiLeaks (accessed September 30, 2014) Viewing cable 09TRIPOLI663, CONFLICTING MESSAGES ON PENDING RELEASE OF ABDEL BASSETT ( Memento of December 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
28. ↑ WikiLeaks cables: Lockerbie bomber freed after Gaddafi's 'thuggish' threats , The Guardian. December 7, 2010. 
29. ↑ US embassy cables: UK citizens at risk if Megrahi dies in prison, Libya warns , The Guardian. December 7, 2010. 
30. ↑ Libya offers $ 2.7 billion Pan Am 103 settlement ( Memento July 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
31. ↑ Libya's Letter To The UN Security Council ( Memento from February 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
32. ↑ Lockerbie lawyer says £ 200m fee is 'good value' , The Scotsman. December 5, 2003. Archived from the original on September 29, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2019. 
33. ↑ US to renew full ties with Libya , BBC. May 15, 2006. 
34. ↑ BBC Radio 4, 24th February 2004 ( Memento of November 24, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
35. ↑ Focus: What justice done? , Times Online. October 23, 2005. Archived from the original on August 4, 2011. 
36. ↑ New documents in the context of the MST-13 timer fragment reveal criminal machinations
37. ^ Shadow over Lockerbie - The Story . American Radio Works.
38. ↑ The question of who? - Carl-Ludwig Paeschke investigates the 'Lockerbie attack - myth and truth' (Tuesday, December 16, 9:15 pm, ZDF) ( Memento from February 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
39. ^ Lockerbie classified information , Heise online. 4th December 2007. 
40. ↑ Press portal: The Lockerbie attack / ZDF documentary explores myth and truth. December 15, 2008
41. ↑ October Intelligence Summary , Ohmy News. November 9, 2008. 
42. ↑ MIDEAST TENSIONS; Ex-CIA Official Says US Ignores Syrian Terror , New York Times. November 21, 1990. 
43. ^ PAN AM Flight 103.Defense Intelligence Agency , DOI 910200, page 49/50 (pages 7 and 8 in the PDF document), accessed on January 12, 2010 . 
44. ↑ Ghadhafi ordered the Lockerbie attack , NZZ Online. February 23, 2011. 
45. ↑ The New Yorker: The Avenger , September 28, 2015
46. ^ New Lockerbie report says Libyan was framed to conceal the real bombers , The Independent. March 11, 2014. 
47. ↑ Dark Elegy website
48. ↑ The Lockerbie Memorial Cairn on the Arlington National Cemetery website
49. ↑ Mayday - Alarm in the cockpit: The Lockerbie attack. In: Fernsehserien.de. Retrieved March 8, 2019 . 
50. ↑ Lockerbie Revisited. In: Programm.ARD.de. December 30, 2014, accessed March 8, 2019 . 
51. ↑ Death Flight Pan Am 103 - The Mystery of Lockerbie. In: Programm.ARD.de. December 16, 2016, accessed March 8, 2019 . 
52. ^ ZDF History: The Lockerbie Riddle. In: Programm.ARD.de. December 16, 2016, accessed March 8, 2019 . 
53. ↑ Pan-Am Flight 103 - The Announced Disaster. In: Spiegel.de. December 21, 2018, accessed March 8, 2019 . 

Coordinates: 55 ° 7 ′ 15.9 ″  N , 3 ° 21 ′ 19.1 ″  W.