1986 United States Bombing of Libya - Later Libyan-connected Terrorism

Later Libyan-connected Terrorism

There was only limited change in Libyan-connected terrorism.

The Libyan government was alleged to have ordered the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Pakistan on 5 September 1986, which resulted in the deaths of 20 people. The allegation did not come to light until it was reported by The Sunday Times in March 2004—days after British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid the first official visit to Tripoli by a Western leader in a generation.

In May 1987, Australia deported diplomats and broke off relations with Libya, claiming Libya sought to fuel violence in Australia and Oceania.

In late 1987 French authorities stopped a merchant vessel, the MV Eksund, which was delivering 150 tons of Soviet arms from Libya to European terrorist groups.

In Beirut, Lebanon, two British hostages held by the Libyan-supported Abu Nidal Organization, Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield, along with an American named Peter Kilburn, were shot dead in revenge. In addition, journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped, and tourist Paul Appleby was murdered in Jerusalem, Israel. Another British hostage named Alec Collett was also killed in retaliation for the bombing of Libya. Collett was shown being hanged in a video tape. His body was found in November 2009.

On 21 December 1988, came the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded in mid-air and crashed on the town of Lockerbie in Scotland after a bomb set by Libyan agents detonated, killing all 259 people aboard, and 11 people in Lockerbie. Iran was initially thought to have been responsible for the bombing in revenge for the downing of the Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes, but in 1991 two Libyans were charged, one of whom was convicted of the crime in a controversial judgement on 31 January 2001. The Libyan Government formally accepted responsibility for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing on 29 May 2002, and offered $2.7 billion to compensate the families of the 270 victims. However, the convicted Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was allegedly suffering from terminal prostate cancer, was released in August 2009 by the Scottish Executive on compassionate grounds.