Pan Am Flight 103

Just before Christmas in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland, killing the 259 passengers and crew members on their way from London to New York and 11 people on the ground.

The United States and Scotland issued indictments against two Libyan intelligence officers for the bombing, but Libya refused to surrender the suspects, leading the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions against the country in 1992.

After years of negotiations and sanctions, Libya agreed to extradite the two suspects, on condition that they be tried in a third country. So a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands, and the suspects were extradited more than 10 years after the Boeing 747 was bombed.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence official, was convicted in 2001. He was the only person found guilty in the case.

On Aug. 20, 2009, despite strenuous American opposition, the Scottish government ordered his release on compassionate grounds and permitted him to return home after serving 8 years of his 27-year minimum sentence for murdering 270 people. He qualified for compassionate release after medical evidence showed he would die within months of prostate cancer, the Scottish authorities said.

Of the dead, 189 were Americans. The Scottish decision has provoked anguished protests from American families of the victims who had demanded that he serve his full sentence. The White House said in a news release that it "deeply regrets" the Scottish decision. Scotland's Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskil, said it was his decision alone that Mr. Megrahi "be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die."

Sixteen months after Mr. Megrahi's conviction, Libya acknowledged responsibility and offered $10 million in damages for each of the 270 victims, although that payment later became an issue. Libya offered the money in stages, as sanctions were removed, and the last portion was to come after the United States restored full diplomatic relations. In May 2006 the United States agreed to do so, but that was after the deadline set by Libya in the agreement, so the final $2 million per family was not paid.

Congress is considering legislation that would bar construction of a new American embassy in Tripoli until Libya settles with the families, and with the victims of a previous terror attack, the bombing in 1986 of a disco popular with American servicemen in what was then West Berlin. Lawyers for those victims say their Libyan counterparts had agreed to damage payments but then reneged.

After the West Berlin bombings, President Ronald Reagan sent warplanes to bomb Tripoli. But relations between Libya and both the United States and Britain warmed after the country disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program and agreed to give it up. American officials have described their treatment of Libya as an inducement to other countries to give up nuclear weapons programs.

On June 28, 2007, a Scottish legal panel concluded that Mr. Megrahi should be granted an appeal, challenging some of the evidence presented at his trial. On April 28, 2009, more than 20 years after the jumbo jet was bombed, a five-member panel of judges in Edinburgh began hearing the case. In August 2009, before he was released, his lawyers abandoned the appeal.

Mr. Megrahi has always professed his innocence, a stand he affirmed in a written statement read at a court hearing in November 2008 that failed to win him release because of his prostate cancer.

[Source : topics.nytimes.com]