Date: 21 December 1988 

Aircraft: Boeing 747

Flight: Pan Am 103, from Frankfurt to New York, via London Heathrow.

Event: Aircraft exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew, plus 11 people on the ground, were killed.

A Fatal Accident Inquiry concluded that the crash was caused by a bomb in the left side of the forward luggage hold. 

It found that the explosion was caused by a Semtex-type plastic explosive in a Toshiba radio-cassette player inside a Samsonite suitcase which been carried by Pan Am from Frankfurt to London and then transferred to Flight 103. Along with other transit baggage, it had not been X-rayed, counted, weighed, or reconciled with passengers travelling on Flight 103.

Although there have been various theories about the motive for the attack, on 13 November 1991, Scottish and US authorities issued warrants for the arrest of two Libyans, Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, an employee of Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, and Abd al-Basset al-Megrahi, a former security chief of the airline.

Libya refused to hand over the suspects. Its constitution (as in most countries) prohibits the extradition of its own nationals. On 31 March 1992, the UN Security Council responded with resolution 748 which banned all air traffic to and from Libya, along with arms sales.

Eventually it was agreed that the suspects would be tried by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. The suspects arrived in the Netherlands on April 5, 1999, and sanctions were suspended the same day.