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'Worst case of airline terrorism' heads for trial

Daniel and Susan Cohen, parents of Pan Am Flight 103 victim Theodora Cohen of New Jersey, arrive at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam on Tuesday

By Raju Chebium
CNN Interactive Correspondent

May 2, 2000
Web posted at: 2:28 p.m. EST (1828 GMT)

ATLANTA (CNN) - On Dec. 21, 1988, New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, 38 minutes after taking off from London. All 259 people on board were killed, including 189 Americans. Eleven people on the ground also died as pieces of the plane, body parts and fire rained from the sky.

Armed with the fragments of a circuit board and a timer, U.S. and British investigators ruled that a bomb, not mechanical failure, had caused the explosion.

"It is the worst case of airline terrorism -- the largest mass murder in the world," said John Grant, a Lockerbie expert and a law professor at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

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More than 11 years after the fact -- two Libyans, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 48, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 44, are scheduled to stand trial in the Netherlands for the bombing.

Charged with 270 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder and violating Britain's 1982 Aviation Security Act, the men face up to life in prison in Scotland. The United States' Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have said the men, employed by Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, also were Libyan intelligence agents.

The men repeatedly have proclaimed innocence, saying they agreed to stand trial to clear their names. They also deny that they worked for Libyan intelligence.

"We are confident of our innocence. We are ready to appear before court because we ... have nothing to be afraid of," al-Megrahi said on a British television program in 1998.

The pair will be tried in a Scottish court in Camp Zeist, a former U.S. Air Force base 20 miles south of the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. The Dutch have declared 30 acres of the 100-acre base Scottish territory so that the trial could be held in a neutral country as Al-Megrahi, Fhimah and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had wanted. There will be no jury; three judges will preside, with a fourth as reserve. The case is expected to last a year and could cost as much as $90 million.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers didn't return telephone messages from CNN Interactive seeking comment.

Anatomy of the bombing

Authorities say Al-Megrahi and Fhimah manufactured the bomb out of Semtex plastic explosives, concealed it in a Toshiba cassette recorder, hid the recorder in a Samsonite suitcase and slipped the suitcase aboard an Air Malta flight headed from Malta to Frankfurt, Germany. The unaccompanied bag was transferred to a Pan Am flight to London and then to Flight 103, authorities say.

Over three years, investigators from the United States, Britain, Germany and a few other countries questioned more than 15,000 people in more than 30 countries and collected thousands of pieces of evidence. Investigators said the trail led to the Libyans because the bomb parts came from manufacturers who had sold the equipment exclusively to the oil-rich North African nation, long suspected by the United States of being a sponsor of terrorism.

The nose section of Pan Am Flight 103 lies in a field outside the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, in this December 22, 1988, photo

Authorities also said the clues pointed to Malta because the bomb-carrying suitcase originated at Malta's Luqa airport. Al-Megrahi and Fhimah were stationed in Malta for the Libyan national airline.

The motive for the bombing remains unclear, however.

Those who blame the Libyans theorize that Libya sought revenge for the U.S. bombing of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and Benghazi, a seaport, in 1986. President Ronald Reagan ordered the bombings in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub where U.S. military personnel were killed. According to another theory, the Iranians blew up the plane to avenge the shootdown of an Iranian jetliner by the USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf in 1988. The U.S. maintains that the aircraft carrier mistook the passenger jet for an F-14 fighter jet. All 290 on board were killed. Yet another theory says Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorists were doing a contract job for Iran.

"Whoever is out of favor at the moment has been blamed," said Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C. "The whole Arab world got blamed."

He said if the Libyans are convicted, people should blame them and whomever the Libyans worked for -- not all Arabs. Ibish said it has been documented that hate crimes against Arabs increase after every suspected act of terrorism.

Years of political wrangling

Until April 5, 1999, it appeared a trial would never take place. Britain and the United States were adamant that Al-Megrahi and Fhimah be tried in a British or American court. Gadhafi refused to extradite the men, citing the Libyan constitution's ban on extraditing citizens to stand trial overseas and expressing fear that the pair might not receive a fair trial in either country.

Bullet-proof glass separates the Camp Zeist courtroom, where the suspects will be tried, from the public viewing gallery.

Libya further argued that under a pact that all three countries had signed -- the 1971 Montreal convention aimed at boosting airline security -- Libya could try Al-Megrahi and Fhimah in its own courts, said Robert Black, a Lockerbie expert at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Unmoved, the United States and Britain turned to the United Nations Security Council, which imposed sanctions against Libya in 1992 and 1993, barring direct flights in and out of Libya, forbidding the sale of arms and spare parts for oil refineries and freezing some of Libya's overseas assets. In 1994, Black proposed that the trial be held in a neutral country with a panel of international judges -- a proposal that Ibrahim Legwell, then the head of the Libyan defense team, accepted.

Britain and the United States rejected Black's proposal, however. It became clear that Libya was willing to defy the West and endure the sanctions. The pressure on the United States and Britain to cut a deal with Gadhafi mounted as the Arabs threatened to flout the sanctions and Italy and France began speaking out against them, Black and Grant said.

In 1998, the British and the Americans offered a proposal largely similar to Black's; the key difference was that Scottish, not international, judges would preside over Al-Megrahi's and Fhimah's trial in a neutral country. The Netherlands agreed to host the trial at Camp Zeist.

"Britain and America never thought Libya would accept it," Black said. "It would look good from a public relations perspective but there was no hope in hell that Libya would accept it."

Libya did precisely that in April 1999, after South African President Nelson Mandela and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah persuaded Gadhafi to accept the deal.

The U.N. sanctions were suspended after Al-Megrahi and Fhimah arrived in the Netherlands. U.S. sanctions imposed in the 1980s, barring most trade with Libya, remain in place.

Ray Takeyh, a Libyan expert at the Washington, D.C., Institute for Near East Policy, said Gadhafi probably agreed to the deal because the sanctions were hurting Libya.

"Libya ... claims to defy international norm, yet at the same time it is hostage to international markets. Libya has nothing more than gas and oil and these are export products," Takeyh said. "Libya had to revive its economy." The Libyans have said they lost $30 billion because of the trade ban.

Long wait for victims' families

Meanwhile, the victims' families are somewhat happy that the trial is scheduled to get under way.

But George Williams, who lost his only child on Flight 103 and who heads a U.S.-based lobbying and support group called Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said he wouldn't be entirely satisfied until Gadhafi is brought to justice. Echoing a commonly held view, Williams said he finds it inconceivable that two citizens of a totalitarian state like Libya could have planned and carried out the bombing without their leader knowing about it.

The anger over the long wait and the pain of losing their 24-year-old son George -- who went by "Geordie" -- have taken a severe toll on Williams and his wife, Judy.

Geordie Williams, a U.S. Army lieutenant stationed on the U.S. base in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, was going home for Christmas on Flight 103.

"We were under our psychiatrist's care for a good while," said Williams, a 68-year-old retired real estate agent and postal service employee who lives in Joppatowne, Maryland, north of Baltimore. "We will be on Prozac on the rest of our lives, he said. It's not been easy, but I grew up tough; I am a Marine."

He paused and added softly, "The only closure I will have is when they close the lid on my casket."