Pan Am Flight 103

Pan Am Flight 103 was a Boeing 747 flying from London to New York when a bomb hidden in a radio cassette player inside a suitcase exploded in its cargo hold over southern Scotland. The aircraft broke apart and its wreckage fell on the town of Lockerbie. All 259 people on board and 11 residents on the ground were killed. A long investigation by Scottish and American authorities pointed to Libyan intelligence agents, and in 2001 a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was released on compassionate grounds in 2009. Libya accepted responsibility in 2003 and paid compensation to the families, though some questions about the case have remained a matter of public debate.

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