This Day in Islamic Terrorism: Lockerbie

Introducing a new feature here at Amboy, This Day in Islamic Terrorism. It's an Idea I've been pondering for quite awhile. I've been building a calender of the more significant events over the last few months and I feel the 20th anniversary of Lockerbie is a good time to start this new feature.

The reason for This Day in Islamic Terrorism is to remind people that Terrorism is motivated by jihad and didn't begin or end with 9/11.

On this day in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. A bomb hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The disaster, which became the subject of Britain's largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against the United States. One hundred eighty nine of the victims were American.

Islamic terrorists were accused of planting the bomb on the plane while it was at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. (...)

Sixteen days before the explosion over Lockerbie, the U.S. embassy in Helsinki, Finland, received a call warning that a bomb would be placed on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt. There is controversy over how seriously the U.S. took the threat and whether travelers should have been alerted, but officials later said that the connection between the call and the bomb was coincidental.

In 1991, following a joint investigation by the British authorities and the F.B.I., Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were indicted for murder; however, Libya refused to hand over the suspects to the U.S. Finally, in 1999, in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against his country, Qaddafi agreed to turn over the two men to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors. In early 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and Fhimah was acquitted.

In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, but didn't express remorse. The U.N. and U.S. lifted sanctions against Libya and Libya agreed to pay each victim's family approximately $8 million in restitution. In 2004, Libya's prime minister said that the deal was the "price for peace," implying that his country only took responsibility to get the sanctions lifted, a statement that infuriated the victims' families. Pan Am Airlines, which went bankrupt three years after the bombing, sued Libya and later received a $30 million settlement.

Gaddfi's Son Saif opined on the subject earlier this year.

"You have to ask the families of the victims," he said. "The negotiation with them, it was very terrible and very materialistic and was very greedy. They were asking for more money and more money and more money.

"I think they were very greedy and I think they were trading with the blood of their sons and daughters."

So to say that Libya expressed no remorse is a bit of an understatement.

The Victims of Pan Am Flight 103

Here's the Islamic Terror Calender for December.

Dec 7, 1985 Hezbollah bombs two print shops in Paris.

Dec 11, 1994 Phillipeans Airline flight 434 bombed by Ramzi Yousef

Dec 13, 2001 Terrorist attack on Indian Parliament.

Dec 14, 1999 Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the US-Canadian border in Port Angeles Washington with a trunkful of explosives. He confessed to planning to bomb LAX as part of the millennium terror plots.

Dec 17, 1973 Palestinian terrorists bomb Pan Am Flight 110, killing 30

Dec 21, 1998 Lockerbie

Dec 22, 1975 Carlos the Jackal, member of PFLP, takes 42 hostages on a DC-9 to Algiers.

Dec 22, 2001 Richard Reid, attempting to destroy American Airlines Flight 63, is subdued by passengers and flight attendants before he could detonate his shoe bomb.

Dec 24, 1994 Air France flight 8969 hijacked by GIA 3 killed 3 injured.

Dec 24, 1999 Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacked by the Taliban. 1 killed.

Dec 24, Christmas Eve 2000 Indonesia bombings, 18 killed.

Dec 25, 1986 Iraqi airways flight 163 hijacked by Islamic jihad. 63 killed.

Dec 26, 1968 Two Palestinian gunmen attack El Al jet, killing 1.

Dec 27, 1985 Rome and Vienna Airport Attack carried out by Abu Nidal, 18 killed.

Dec 30, 2000 Phillipeans,  Rizal Day Bombings, 22 dead, over 100 injured.

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