The Lockerbie bombing
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.
The bomb exploded at 7:02 p.m. as the Boeing 747 was flying over Lockerbie, at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The plane broke into pieces and crashed into the ground, killing everyone on board.
The bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil, and the second-deadliest terrorist attack in the world at the time. It was also the third-deadliest aviation disaster in history, after the Tenerife airport disaster in 1977 and the Japan Airlines Flight 123 crash in 1985.
The investigation into the bombing was one of the most complex and expensive in history. It involved law enforcement agencies from the United States, the United Kingdom, and several other countries.
In 1991, two Libyan men, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were charged with the bombing. They were tried before a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands, and in 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Fhimah was acquitted.
Megrahi’s conviction was controversial, and he always maintained his innocence. He was released from prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds, after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died in 2012.
The Lockerbie bombing remains an unsolved crime, and there are many unanswered questions about who was responsible for it. However, the investigation did lead to the conviction of one man, and it helped to prevent future terrorist attacks.
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