On December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. A bomb was later determined to have caused the crash. Investigators identified two Libyan intelligence agents, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, as suspects in the bombing. The attack was believed to be retaliation for a series of confrontations between the United States and Libya in the 1980s. Notably, in 1986 the United States had bombed Libya’s capital, Tripoli. Megrahi was convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 2001, but Fhimah was acquitted. In 2003 the Libyan government “accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials” and agreed to pay billions of dollars to the families of the victims.
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