Scotland – Memorial services in the Scottish town of Lockerbie will this week mark the 30th anniversary of the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet that killed 270 people.
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The jet exploded over Lockerbie on route from London to New York on December 21, 1988. All 259 people on board were killed. Another 11 people were killed on the ground. It is the deadliest ever militant attack in Britain.
Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was jailed for life in 2001 after being found guilty of the attack, in association with others who were never identified. Megrahi was later released because he was suffering from cancer.
In 2003, Muammar Gaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility for the bombing and paid compensation to the victims’ families but he did not admit to personally ordering the attack.
Meanwhile, the FBI has released a series of videos to commemorate the anniversary of the bombing. see here
Pan Am could have prevented the bombing; they were just too cheap to employ security screeners who could have detected a bomb in one of the suitcases, using sophisticated screening equipment, which El Al had been using for years. In fact, the overseas airlines coming from the USA to Europe and vice-versa, in the late 1980’s lied to the public, about their screening of the luggage, as well as of passengers. Today, we take luggage and passenger screening very seriously. Unfortunately, in 1988, that was not the case. Also, the blasted Scottish authorities refused to waive their requirement of a forced autopsy on the Jewish victims of Pan Am 103, and went ahead with autopsies for every victim, even though their deaths were evident, as a result of the bombing, as well as the crash and explosion of the plane. On the other hand, when a TWA flight exploded over Long Island Sound (en route to Paris), in 1996, the local authorities were very sensitive to avoid autopsies on the Jewish victims.