Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

524 • PAN AM FLIGHT 103 BOMBINGPAN AM FLIGHT 103 BOMBING. On 21 December 1988 PanAmerican World Airways (Pan Am) Flight 103, a Boeing 747 flyingfrom London to New York, exploded at about 30,000 feet over Scotland.All 259 aboard perished, while the falling debris of the aircraftkilled 11 people in the Scottish village of Lockerbie. Reconstructionof the bomb from the debris that was scattered over a large area ofsouthwestern Scotland revealed that the bomb was made with Semtexexplosive concealed in a Toshiba radio-cassette player, identicalto bombs made by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-GeneralCommand (PFLP-GC) group of Ahmad Jibril thathad been seized by West German police in a raid on a PFLP-GC cellon 26 October 1988. Knowing from this the type of timing deviceused in the bomb, investigators determined that the bomb had beenintended to explode once the airplane was over the Atlantic Ocean.A delay in departure of 25 minutes at London’s Heathrow Airportcaused the plane to explode instead over land, which made reconstructingthe bomb and identification of its source possible. Forensicanalysis of the luggage in which the bomb was placed revealed thatthe bomb had been loaded onto the plane in luggage booked for aconnecting flight in Frankfurt and that the original source of the luggagewas Malta.While investigators had been certain that the bomb was manufacturedby the PFLP-GC, an entrepreneurial terrorist group having tieswith Iran, Libya, and Syria, this alone did not establish directly thatthe same group had itself planted the bomb nor did it reveal whichstate, if any, had sponsored the bombing. Originally, credit for thebombing was claimed by telephone in the name of the Guardians ofthe Islamic Revolution, causing suspicion to center on Iran, whichwas seen as having a sufficient motive in avenging the deaths of 290passengers and crew killed when the USS Vincennes shot down IranAir Flight 655 on 3 July 1988 by mistake. The Maltese origin of theluggage, however, also suggested Libyan sponsorship.Following further investigations, the United States issued indictmentson 14 November 1991 against two Libyan officials, chargingthe Libyan government with state sponsorship of the bombing. Inits April 1992 report on global terrorism, the U.S. State Departmentpublished evidence linking the Libyan regime with the bombing,while Muammar Qaddafi at first refused to extradite the two officialsnamed in those indictments. The refusal of Libya to extradite