Video: 'A look back at Lockerbie plane bombing'
(Wednesday, January 31, 2001) — A Scottish court today found Libyan intelligence official Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi guilty of murder in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, when 270 people, including 11 on the ground, died.
The court did not convict the second defendant, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, and released him.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was given a life sentence, but was released after eight years on compassionate grounds by Scotland’s government. He died in 2012.
The investigation into the bombing pitted Libya and its leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, against the West, with international sanctions costing Libya an estimated $30 billion before it finally handed over the suspects in 1999 under a diplomatic compromise that brought the trial to the Netherlands.
