The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks (17 page)

On January 9, 2010, Rahim, a Palestinian member of Abu Nidal with suspected al Qaeda ties, was killed in an air strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan. He had been tried and convicted in Pakistan in the Pan Am 73 attack, but he and three accomplices were freed in January 2008. The four made the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) Most Wanted Terrorist List in 2009.

Overview:
The midair explosion of Pan Am 103 sparked one of the most puzzling whodunits in modern terrorism investigations. Initial theories looked at Iranian-sponsored Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine— General Command (PFLP-GC) terrorists out for revenge for the shootdown of an Iranian civil airliner in July 1988 by the USS
Vincennes
. Further investigation, however, pointed to two Libyans who worked at the behest of Qadhafi's intelligence service. The United States eventually decided that Libyan perfidy was once again at play, and Tripoli had earned its inclusion on the list of patron state sponsors of terrorism.

Incident:
On December 21, 1988, a pressure-sensitive time bomb exploded on Pan Am flight 103 as it was flying from London to New York. The B-747 crashed into the Scotland town of Lockerbie, 15 miles north of the English border, killing all 258 on board plus 15 people in the town. Another 12 seriously burned villagers were hospitalized. The plane had left London's Heathrow Airport at 6:25
P.M.
It disappeared from radar contact at 7:15
P.M.
when it was cruising at 31,000 feet.

Investigators initially believed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the PFLP-GC were responsible for the attack. The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution claimed credit, saying it was retaliating
for the downing in July of an Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship in which 290 people died. A spokesman for the IRGC also claimed credit, although Iran denied responsibility. Fadl Shrourou, chief spokesman for Ahmed Jibril, leader of PFLP-GC, denied responsibility, although some observers noted that 13 members of the group had been arrested in Frankfurt on October 27, 1988.

U.K. and U.S. investigators examined the theory that the bomb was unwittingly taken on board by Khalid Jaafer, 21, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese Shia origins, who was returning to Michigan after a visit to Lebanon and Frankfurt. They thought he may have carried the brown Samsonite bag containing the bomb, believing it contained heroin. He traveled from Beirut to Germany, where he stayed with a Lebanese friend who had a relative in Hizballah.

On December 21, 1989, Muhammad Abu Talib was sentenced by the Uppsala, Sweden, town court to life imprisonment for attempted murder and gross destruction dangerous to the public for setting off two bombs in Copenhagen in July 1985 against the synagogue and against the Northwest Orient Airlines office, in which one person was killed and several others injured. Talib was also suspected by British police of participating in the Lockerbie bombing. Believed to be a member of PFLP-GC, Talib was one of 14 Arabs arrested on October 26, 1988, in Neuss, West Germany, where police found a weapons cache. The cache included altitude-sensitive detonators and three bombs built into Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio-cassette recorders. The Lockerbie bomb fragments exactly matched these components.

A fragment of the detonator found in the Scottish countryside differed from the Neuss cache. The Pan Am 103 detonator lacked an altimeter and had only a timer. This type of detonator matched timers seized from two Libyan intelligence agents arrested in Dakar, Senegal, in February 1988 on an Air Afrique flight en route to the Ivory Coast.

Bits of clothing in the suitcase in which the bomb exploded were traced to a clothing shop in Malta, a hangout for Libyans. The shopkeeper recalled selling it in November 1988 to a man with a Libyan accent. Investigators suspected the suitcase was sent to Frankfurt via Air Malta flight 180, then transferred unaccompanied to Pan Am 103.

On June 26, 1991, French authorities announced evidence that senior Libyan officials, including Abdullah Senoussi, Qadhafi's brother-in-law and de facto chief of Libyan intelligence, and Moussa Koussa, vice minister of foreign affairs, were involved in the September 1989 French UTA bombing and the bombing of Pan Am 103.

On November 14, 1991, a federal grand jury in Washington issued 193 felony counts against Libyan intelligence officers Abdel Basset Ali alMegrahi, 39, and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, 35. They were accused of planting and detonating the bomb and were believed to be in Libya. The U.S. indictment included 189 counts for killing the 189 U.S. citizens. It also
included one count of conspiracy, one count of putting a destructive device on a U.S. civil aircraft resulting in death, one count of destroying a U.S. civil aircraft with an explosive device, and one count of destroying a vehicle in foreign commerce. The United Kingdom issued similar arrest warrants.

Authorities said the evidence was built up after FBI agents and Scottish police combed 845 square miles of territory. One clue was part of the Toshiba's circuit board. Another was part of a timing device traced to Meister and Bollier, a Zurich-based Swiss company that had sold it in a consignment of 20 prototypes made in 1985–1986 to a high-level Libyan intelligence official. Moreover, according to the State Department, the Pan Am 103 bomb had been activated by a sophisticated electronic timer, in contrast to the PFLP-GC bombs, which had altimeter switches and relatively crude timers.

On December 4, 1991, Libya's new intelligence chief, Col. Yusuf al-Dabri, announced the detention of Megrahi and Fhimah. The United States and United Kingdom demanded their extradition, but Qadhafi declined.

On December 8, 1991, Libya announced that it would try the two men charged by U.S. and U.K. authorities and that it would deliver the death penalty if they were found guilty.

On December 29, 1991, the
Washington Post
cited a CNN report that a Libyan who defected to the United States could serve as a witness in the case, testifying that Fhimah fabricated the Air Malta luggage tags. He was in the Justice Department's Witness Protection Program and was living under an assumed identity on the West Coast. The low-level defector, who did not have an intelligence affiliation, obtained Fhimah's Malta diary. The December 15, 1988, diary entry said, “Take tags from Air Malta.” The defector had arrived in the United States several months earlier, but had left some family members in Libya. He could be eligible for up to $4 million in a federal reward system.

On January 14, 1992, Libya proposed that an international commission of legal experts decide whether the UN Security Council should rule on who was responsible for the UTA and Pan Am cases. Maj. Abdul Salaam Jalloud said that his government would abide by the decision of such a panel, although Libya questioned whether the United Nations had jurisdiction.

On January 20, 1992, the UN Security Council strengthened draft Resolution 731 urging Libya to surrender the six suspects wanted for the Pan Am and UTA bombings. The resolution, which passed unanimously on January 21, 1992, included a lead role for UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and called for a “full and effective response” to requests for the suspects. Libya denounced the resolution as an infringement on its sovereignty.

On March 31, 1992, the UN Security Council imposed via Resolution 748 an air and arms embargo on Libya, which took effect on April 15, 1992,
when Libya refused to hand over the duo. The sanctions were far milder than those in place against Iraq and permitted oil exports. Libya thus became the sixth country in UN history to be hit with sanctions, joining Rhodesia, South Africa, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Somalia.

On May 6, 1992, the Argentine interior ministry canceled the residence permit and Argentine passport granted to Syrian citizen Monzer al-Kassar, 46, accused narcoterrorist and weapons smuggler. He was also suspected of financing the Lockerbie bombing. Buenos Aires
Clarin
re ported that the Israeli secret service was following an “al-Kassar clue” regarding the March 17, 1992, bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. On June 3, 1992, officers of Spain's general intelligence department arrested al-Kassar and two other men as they were deplaning at Madrid–Barajas airport as they arrived on a flight from Vienna.

On September 28, 1993, Lord Macaulay suggested that an international court be set up to deal with such cases. It would have judges from Libya, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, and it would be chaired by a judge from another country. The prosecution could be conducted by Scotland's lord advocate and the U.S. attorney general.

On September 29, 1993, Libyan foreign minister Omar Muntasser told UN secretary general Boutros-Ghali that it would turn over the duo to Scotland.

On January 23, 1994, the
London Observer
reported that Edwin Bollier, who had changed his testimony on the timers, admitted receiving expenses from Libya to include his travel to and from Libya, hotel bills there, and telephone and fax expenses, as well as Lockerbie-related legal bills. He also hoped Libya would pick up the £1.2 million in lost business Mebo had suffered.

On March 23, 1995, the FBI announced a $4 million reward for the capture of the two Libyans and placed them on its Ten Most Wanted List.

On March 31, 1995, the UN Security Council extended the sanctions against Libya. U.S. UN ambassador Madeleine K. Albright urged other nations to join in an oil embargo. The council reviewed the sanctions every 120 days. No formal vote was taken on the automatic extension. On October 29, 1988, the UN Security Council, for the 20th time in seven years, extended the sanctions against Libya.

The United Nations and the Libyans eventually agreed to a trial to be hosted by the International Court of Justice in The Hague using Scottish law with a Scottish judge. On April 5, 1999, the Libyans handed over the duo to UN officials, who took them to Camp Zeist outside The Hague. Their arrival automatically suspended the sanctions against Libya. The two appeared in court the next day charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and violations of international aviation security laws. The trial opened on May 3, 2000.

On January 31, 2001, the court found Megrahi guilty of murder; he lost an appeal on March 14, 2002. Fhimah was acquitted and immediately
returned to a hero's welcome in Libya. The court said the Libyan government was involved in planning and carrying out the bombing. Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. The court cited the identification of the Swiss-made Mebo MST13 timer as a key piece of evidence linking the bomb to the Libyans. Testimony of a prosecution witness was deemed not credible enough to link Fhimah to the blast.

On August 15, 2003, Libya formally accepted responsibility and agreed to pay as much as $10 million to each victim's family. The first $4 million would be paid upon lifting of UN sanctions, the next $4 million after the United States lifted sanctions, and the final money after the State Department removed Libya from the patron state list. On September 20, 2004, President Bush lifted the ban on commercial air service to Libya and released $1.3 billion in frozen Libyan assets. Libya was expected to use $1 billion of the money to compensate the families. On June 26, 2006, Libya announced that it was no longer legally bound to its agreement to make final payments of $2 million each to the families of the victims. Libya said that although it had recently been dropped from the State Department's list of terrorism sponsors, the United States had until the end of 2004 to do so to and thereby trigger the final payment.

On December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would abandon weapons of mass destruction, freeze its nuclear program, and permit international inspectors into the country.

On August 4, 2008, President Bush directed the State Department to settle the final lawsuits against Libya in the bombing. Libya would receive immunity from future proceedings once compensation was paid.

Megrahi, claiming to have three months to live from terminal prostate cancer, was permitted to return to Libya on August 20, 2009. He gave a media interview from his death bed in October 2011. The following month, U.S. State Department said it would make a formal request for extradition. Meghrahi died at his home in Tripoli, Libya, on May 20, 2012.

Overview:
While the Pan Am 103 bombing received greater publicity in the United States, the Libyan hand was also seen behind the bombing of a French airline Union des Transports Aériens (UTA) plane from Chad that killed 171 people. Libya government officials eschewed responsibility, but Tripoli ultimately paid millions in compensation to the victims' families.

Incident:
On September 19, 1989, the Clandestine Chadian Resistance claimed credit for setting off a bomb in French UTA flight 772, a DC-10
flying from N'djamena to Paris, killing all 171 passengers and crew when it crashed in eastern Niger's Tenere Desert.

Among the dead were 49 Congolese, 29 Chadians, and French passengers. All of the crew were French. There were eight children, including three infants, on board. The victims included seven Americans, including Bonnie Pugh, wife of Robert L. Pugh, U.S. ambassador to Chad. Mrs. Pugh was traveling to help plan the wedding of her daughter in October. Also on the plane was Margaret Schutzius, 23, a Peace Corps volunteer who had completed a two-year tour in Chad as an English teacher; Patrick Huff, 38, of Franklin Texas; Donald Warner, 25, of Terry, Montana, of Parker Drilling Company; and Mihai Ali Manestianu. Also on board were James Turlington, 48, of Bellville, Texas, and Mark Corder, 35, of Houston, who had worked for Esso and an Exxon subsidiary.

The dead included Dominique Mavoungou, managing director of Congo's Housing Promotion and Management Company; his wife; child; and seven members of another family. Other victims were the leader of Congo's theatrical troupe, Roca do Zulu; Jean-Pierre Klein of France; the daughter of Jean-Michel Bokamba Yangouma, secretary general of the Congolese Trade Union Confederation; and son of Norbert Dabira, secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Congolese Labour Party. One of the Frenchmen, Jacques Renaudat, 53, had been alleged to be trafficking arms. Mahamat Soumahila, Chad's minister for planning and cooperation, also died. Two British employees of Parker Drilling perished. The Capuchin Roman Catholic order announced in Lucerne that Monsignors Antoine Gervais Aeby, who heads the order in Switzerland, and Gabriel Balet, a Swiss bishop in Chad, were on the flight. Also dead was the brother of Renaud Denoix de Saint Marc, the French government's secretary general.