Could the trial of suspected Lockerbie bombmaker rewrite the narrative of Pan Am Flight 103?

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The wreckage of the Pan-Am 747 plane which was blown up en route to JFK airport by Libyan terrorists. (Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)
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Plane crash of a Boeing 747 of PanAm in Lockerbie 1988. (RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
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An aerial view showing part of the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 which is now kept in the corner of a salvage yard near Tattershall, Lincolnshire. (PA Images via Getty Images)
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Updated 19 January 2025
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Could the trial of suspected Lockerbie bombmaker rewrite the narrative of Pan Am Flight 103?

  • The passenger jet exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people onboard and on the ground
  • Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was the only person convicted over the attack, but new evidence has since come to light 

LONDON: The basic facts are undisputed, but controversy continues to surround the identity of those responsible for the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Clipper Maid of the Seas, over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on the night of Dec. 21, 1988.

Now, more than 37 years on from the tragedy that claimed the lives of 270 people from 20 countries, a third Libyan man is about to stand trial for his alleged part in the plot, offering possible closure to grieving families, but also likely reopening old wounds.

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet en route from London Heathrow to New York JFK Airport, was a little over one hour into its flight, cruising at an altitude of 9,400 meters.




Pan Am's ill-fated Boeing 747-121 plane is pictured at Frankfurt International Airport in Germany in 1986. (Wikimedia Commons)

The cabin crew were moving down the aisles, serving drinks. Many of the 243 passengers would have been watching the in-flight movie, “Crocodile Dundee II,” which, in the days before seat-back screens, had begun to play on the drop-down overhead screens.

Moments later, a little after 7:02 pm, air traffic controllers in Scotland lost contact with the pilots and watched in horror as the aircraft’s radar image broke up into five distinct pieces fanning out across their screens.

A bomb hidden in a suitcase in the cargo hold had exploded with devastating effect. The jumbo disintegrated rapidly, and bodies and flaming aircraft parts began to rain down on and around the town of Lockerbie.




Plane crash of a Boeing 747 of PanAm in Lockerbie in 1988. (RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Even as the bodies of all 259 passengers and crew fell to earth, 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed in their homes by falling wreckage and a fireball caused when the aircraft’s fuel-laden wings gouged out a massive crater in a residential area.

Despite a search over a wide area of countryside that lasted six weeks, the bodies of 10 of Flight 103’s passengers were never found. Only the “fragmented remains” of 13 passengers could be identified in or near the crater.

As the media rushed to the scene, horror stories began to emerge. Corpses and body parts were strewn about the town and surrounding fields. Some of the dead were still strapped into their seats, sitting upright in rows of three and appearing asleep, rather than dead.

FASTFACTS

• Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people.

• Investigators concluded Libyan agents had planted a bomb, hidden in a suitcase, on the Boeing 747.

• Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 for his involvement in the attack.

A military helicopter pilot who joined the search later described finding one man clutching a book, and others still wearing their Walkman headphones.

Three children, siblings aged 6, 3 and 10 months, were found together, with the eldest two holding the baby’s hands.




Police try to identify victims of the Pan Am jumbo jet bombing and crash in the streets of Lockerbie. Bodies and parts of the plane were strewn over an area of up to 10 miles. (PA Images via Getty Images)

Adding to the distress of the bereaved, a paper published by a pathologist in an obscure medical journal revealed that, miraculously and shockingly, at least two of the passengers had probably survived the fall to earth with relatively minor injuries, only to die of exposure because rescuers found them too late.

Within a day, before a bomb had even been confirmed as the cause of the disaster, several groups had claimed responsibility, and at first, suspicion fell on the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command.

But on Nov. 13, 1991, after a three-year joint investigation by Scottish police and the American FBI, indictments for murder were issued against two Libyans — intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa Airport in Malta.




Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 for his involvement in the attack. (Getty Images)

Investigators believed the bomb had originated from Malta, making its way to Flight 103 in London in an unaccompanied suitcase via a feeder flight from Frankfurt International Airport.

It would be more than 11 years after the bombing before the trial of the two men began. In exchange for relaxing international sanctions, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi agreed to hand them over for trial at a special Scottish court convened on neutral ground, in The Netherlands.

On Jan. 31, 2001, the judges announced their verdicts. Fhimah was acquitted of the 270 charges of murder against him, but Al-Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.




Lockerbie bombing defendant Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, left, speaks to the media with Libyan leader Muammar Al Qadhafi after arriving in Tripoli on February 1, 2001, a day his acquital in the Lockerbie bombing trial. (Newsmakers/Getty Images)

Jailed in Barlinnie prison, Scotland, Al-Megrahi would serve only a fraction of his sentence. Following a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer, on Nov. 2, 2009, he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya, where he died two years and nine months later.

But the case was far from closed.

From the outset, conspiracy theories swirled around the tragedy. Some latched onto the fact that several senior US intelligence officials and operatives had been on board the aircraft and accused rogue CIA agents of carrying out the bombing to cover up an illicit drugs operation.

Others pointed the finger at Iran, which certainly had a motive. On July 3, 1988, just five months before Flight 103, the American warship USS Vincennes had accidentally shot down an Iran Air passenger flight en route from Tehran to Dubai, with the loss of all 290 people on board.




A list of the nationalities of the Pan Am Flight 103 terror bombing. (Wikimedia Commons)

But the greatest challenge to the official version of events, which ended with the jailing of Al-Megrahi, came from an unexpected quarter — the father of one of the passengers who was killed on the flight.

Jim Swire, an English doctor who lost his daughter, Flora, came to believe that Al-Megrahi was innocent and that the evidence against him and Fhimah had been falsified. To the dismay of some of the other Lockerbie families, Swire campaigned for years on Al-Megrahi’s behalf, even traveling to Tripoli to meet him after his release.

This year, which marks the 37th anniversary of the downing of Flight 103, Swire’s campaign is the subject of two transatlantic TV dramatizations — the five-part “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth,” starring Colin Firth, and a BBC-Netflix drama series, “Lockerbie.”




The filming set for a TV drama about the Lockerbie bombing underway in West Lothian on March 20, 2024 in Bathgate, Scotland. Colin Firth plays Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the blast. (Getty Images)

What both dramatizations will not cover, however, is the latest extraordinary chapter in the story.

Last month, Lockerbie relatives on both sides of the Atlantic received a sobering piece of news. A 20-meter-long section of the fuselage of the Clipper Maid of the Seas, which had been reconstructed as part of the original investigation, would be flying again, as cargo on board an aircraft transporting it to Washington D.C. as evidence in the trial of a third suspect accused of involvement in the downing of Flight 103.

On May 12 this year, a man identified in court papers as Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Mariami, or simply Masud, will go on trial charged with having made the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

The original investigation identified a suspect called Abu Agela Masud, who at the time could not be traced. But according to an affidavit filed by an FBI special agent in December 2020, in 2017, the bureau received a transcript in Arabic of an interview conducted by Libyan security officers in September 2012 with a man identified as Masud.




Abu Agela Masud, a former colonel in Libya’s External Security Organization, who had allegedly admitted to building the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103. (Alexandria Sheriff's Office photo)

According to the transcript, Masud, a former colonel in Libya’s External Security Organization, had worked as a “technical expert” for the ESO, “building explosive devices from in or around 1973 to in or around 2011,” when Qaddafi was overthrown.

In the interview, Masud had allegedly “admitted to building the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 and to working with Megrahi and Fhimah to execute the plot.”

Furthermore, Masud, who also “admitted his involvement in other plots against citizens of the US and other Western countries,” is alleged to have “confirmed that the bombing operation of Pan Am Flight 103 was ordered by Libyan intelligence leadership.”

According to the transcript, he also told his Libyan interrogators that “after the operation, Qaddafi thanked him and other members of the team for their successful attack on the US.”




People attend a memorial service for those who lost their lives in the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie terror bombing, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Dec. 21, 2011. (Getty Images via AFP)

It is not clear why the transcript of the interview was shared with US investigators when it was but, as the FBI affidavit noted, the Libyan law enforcement officer who obtained Masud’s statement had “expressed a willingness to testify at a trial if the Libyan government agrees to make the officer available.”

US authorities announced on Dec. 12, 2022, that Masud was in custody on American soil, and had been charged in a Washington D.C. court. How he got there is uncertain, as there is no extradition treaty between the US and Libya.

Human Rights Watch claims Masud was “violently seized” from his home in the Abu Salim district of Tripoli on Nov. 17, 2022, by members of an “armed group” who arrived in unmarked cars, wore no insignia, and refused to identify themselves.




A wreath lies at the monument for the victims of Panam flight 103 in Lockerbie cemetery. (AFP)

But in a statement at the time, Michael H. Glasheen, acting assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, said: “The lawful arrest and presentment in court of the alleged bombmaker … is the product of hard work and partnerships across the globe.”

Eight days later, the US embassy in Libya tweeted that Masud’s transfer to US custody “was lawful and conducted in cooperation with Libyan authorities.”

Depending on what emerges in court in May, Masud’s trial could prove fateful for Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Although he was acquitted by the Scottish court in 1991, Fhimah remains a wanted man in America.

For those involved in the long search for justice for the victims of Flight 103 and their families, the trial is a last chance to “renew confidence in the justice process around the case,” in the words of Scotland’s public prosecution service.




Relatives place flowers at the memorial to the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie bombing victims at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on December 21, 2011. (Getty Images via AFP)

“Scotland’s prosecutors and police, working with counterparts in the US, have remained steadfast in our commitment to uncovering the truth and holding those responsible accountable,” said Dorothy Bain, Scotland’s lord advocate, in a statement last month.

Although the original trial considered evidence from 227 witnesses over 72 days, and Al-Megrahi’s conviction was upheld twice at appeal, “I am aware that not everyone shares the same view of the Crown case,” Bain added.

“I have always believed in the power of the legal process as a tool for fairness and public trust. The forthcoming trial in Washington will bring the facts of this case before the public again, and the circumstances of what happened can be fully understood.”
 

 


16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
Updated 6 sec ago
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16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

  • “So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement

ISLAMABAD: Emergency workers have recovered the bodies of 16 Pakistanis after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya, with 10 others believed to be missing, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Thirty-seven people survived the accident, according to authorities.
The ministry first reported the accident on Monday. It said 63 Pakistanis had been onboard the vessel and 10 are still missing, according to unconfirmed reports.
“So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“There are 37 survivors including 1 in hospital and 33 in police custody.”
A team from Pakistan’s embassy in Tripoli visited the coastal city of Zawiya to meet with local officials and those from Zawiya hospital.
“The Embassy in Tripoli is in the process of gathering further information and maintaining contact with the local authorities,” the statement added.
Each year thousands of Pakistanis pay large sums to traffickers to launch risky and illegal journeys to Europe, where they hope to find work and send funds to support families back home.
Pakistanis are frequently among those drowned on crammed boats which sink on the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa from Europe — the world’s deadliest migrant route.
An official from the Federal Investigation Agency, speaking anonymously to AFP in 2023, estimated Pakistanis attempt 40,000 illegal trips every year.
In June that year the Mediterranean witnessed one of its worst migrant shipwrecks when a rusty and overloaded trawler sank overnight. It was carrying more than 750 people — up to 350 of them Pakistanis according to Islamabad — but only 82 bodies were ever recovered.

 


UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
Updated 5 min 25 sec ago
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UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

  • Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit

LONDON: Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, on Tuesday visited a women’s prison to meet ex-offenders and those still serving, as she continues her return to public duties having completed her cancer treatment.
Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit.
“It is great that you are looking at the mother’s wellbeing as well. The best thing for baby is to have a mother whose emotional needs and wellbeing is met as well,” she told staff at the unit.
Former inmate Sam told the princess that parental support was better in jail than outside.
“I only left six weeks ago and I am just getting rolling with everything again. I have said so many times that I just wish I could take this (prison) nursery and put it in my hometown,” she said.
Catherine, 43, who is mother to Prince George 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and six-year-old Prince Louis, has only recently begun a gradual return to royal duties after a shock cancer diagnosis last year.
It was the princess’s fifth public engagement in just over two weeks.


Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

Updated 17 min 52 sec ago
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Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

LONDON: Ukraine will offer to swap territory with Russia in any potential peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published Tuesday, adding that Europe alone would not be able to shoulder Kyiv’s war effort.
Zelensky will meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian leader’s spokesman told AFP, as Washington pushes for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia.
Vance has been a frequent critic of US support that has been vital to Ukraine’s war effort.
“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the UK newspaper’s website on Tuesday.
“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Trump is keen for both sides to reach a deal, the terms of which are a source of concern in Ukraine.
Zelensky told the Guardian he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin territory that Ukraine seized in Russia’s Kursk region six months ago.
“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.
Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine — Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 — though it does not have full control over them.


Trump confirmed Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine.
The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.
Zelensky has said he would offer US companies lucrative reconstruction contracts in a bid to win over Trump.
“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” he told the Guardian.
Ukraine has some of the biggest mineral reserves in Europe and it is “not in the interests of the United States” for those to fall into Russian hands, he said.
“Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners possibilities that didn’t exist before to invest in them. For us it will create jobs, for American companies it will create profits,” he added.
The Munich meeting comes with Russia advancing across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where over the past year it has captured several settlements, most completely flattened by months of Russian bombardments.

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

Updated 21 min 33 sec ago
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Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

  • Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday that would continue downsizing the federal workforce, including strict limits on hiring.
The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is intended to advance Elon Musk ‘s work slashing spending with his Department of Government Efficiency.
It said that “agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law.”
It also said that agencies should “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service.” There are plans for exceptions when it comes to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Trump and Musk are pushing federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, although their plan is currently on hold while a judge reviews its legality. The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allow employees to quit and still get paid until Sept. 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers have taken the offer.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol in support of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she’s fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the deferred resignation program.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
“From the get-go, I didn’t trust it,” she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
“It’s too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others have said fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
“They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried about their families. They’re also worried about their work and the communities they serve,” said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency employee and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said workers “deserve better than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.” She also said that “we actually need these people to stay in their jobs or things are going to start breaking.”


Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

Updated 11 February 2025
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Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

KAMPALA: Ebola cases in Uganda have risen to nine, while 265 other people were being monitored under quarantine, health authorities said Tuesday.

The nine include the first victim, a male nurse who died the day before the outbreak was declared on Jan. 30. That man remains the only fatality.

Eight patients “are receiving medical care and are in stable condition,” a Health Ministry statement said. 

Seven of them were admitted to the main public hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, in addition to one being treated in the eastern district of Mbale, the ministry said, adding that “the situation is under control” amid heightened surveillance.

The nurse who died had first sought treatment in Kampala and later traveled to Mbale, where he was admitted to a public hospital. 

Health authorities said that the man also sought the services of a traditional healer. His relatives are among those being treated for Ebola.

Kampala has a highly mobile population of about 4 million, and officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak. Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever.

There are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that is infecting people in Uganda. But authorities have launched a clinical study to further test the safety and efficacy of a trial vaccine as part of measures to stop the spread of the current outbreak.

The last outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, which began in September 2022, killed at least 55 people by the time it was declared over four months later.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists suspect that the first person infected in an Ebola outbreak acquires the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. 

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.