Pan Am Flight 103 Fast Facts

Here's a look at the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

December 21, 1988 - Pan Am Flight 103 explodes 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, 38 minutes after takeoff from London.

Two hundred fifty-nine people on board the New York-bound Boeing 747 were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.

Afterward, United States and British investigators found fragments of a circuit board and a timer, and ruled that a bomb, not mechanical failure, caused the explosion.

Libyans Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah were tried for the bombing. Megrahi was found guilty, while Fhimah was found not guilty.

The two initial suspects were tried in a Scottish court at Camp Zeist, a former US air base 20 miles south of the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. The Dutch declared 30 acres of the 100-acre base Scottish territory so that the trial could be held in a neutral country as Megrahi, Fhimah and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had wanted. There was no jury; three Scottish judges presided, with a fourth as a reserve.

Authorities said 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 is believed to have been transferred to a Pan Am flight to London and then to Flight 103.