Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled
Pan Am transatlantic flight from
Frankfurt to
Detroit, via
London and
New York. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route, was destroyed by a
terrorist bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew, in what became known as the
Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of
Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 more people on the ground. Following a three-year joint investigation by
Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, Libyan leader Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at
Camp Zeist, Netherlands after protracted negotiations and UN sanctions. In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. In August 2009, he was
released by the
Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with
prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, the only person to be convicted for the attack. He had continually asserted his innocence.