21 December 1988
air tragedy.
Pan Am Airlines flight 103 from
London to
New York exploded while flying over
Lockerbie,
Scotland. 259
passengers and crew were killed on the plane; 11 people on the ground were killed by debris from the crash.
British investigators found that the crash occurred as the result of a bomb exploding in the cargo hold of the jet. A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency investigation resulted in two Libyan intelligence agents being charged in a Scottish court with the attack. After long negotiations, Libya finally turned the two men over in 1999 to be tried in a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. The trial is currently ongoing, over 12 years since the plane exploded.