We Still Don’t Know the Truth About the Lockerbie Bombing
Diplomatic and political concerns keep getting in the way of an open, unrestricted investigation into who killed 270 people
On December 21, 1988, four days before Christmas, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the sleepy Scottish village of Lockerbie. All 259 people on board were killed, as well as 11 people on the ground. “We could feel the wind and the heat coming up towards us even though the burning was half a mile away,” one eyewitness recalled. It was among the most destructive acts of terrorism in history.
The investigation was complex. The plane and most of the victims were American, it had crashed into Scotland, which is part of Britain, and it had flown from Germany. Britain’s smallest police force — the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary — ended up in an improbable collaboration with the FBI.
Finally, two Libyan men were charged with murder: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, a station manager for the airline. The Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi placed them under house arrest, before at least agreeing to their extradition in 1999. The two men were tried under Scots law in 2000–2001 at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Fhimah was acquitted but…
