Britain remembers Lockerbie 20 years on

|PIC1|Memorial services were held on Sunday to mark 20 years since a flight bound for New York was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded at an altitude of 9,400 metres on the night of 21 December 1988, only 40 minutes into the flight. A total of 270 people died in the attack, including all of the mainly American passengers on board and 11 people killed on the ground by debris falling onto a street of houses.

In Lockerbie, a service was held and a wreath laid at the Dryfesdale Cemetery garden of remembrance. Churches in Dryfesdale and Tundergarth held services to coincide with the moment when the plane came down just after 7pm, according to the Press Association.

A memorial service at London’s Heathrow Airport, where the flight took off from, was attended by some 300 people, including relatives of the victims and former Pan Am employees. The service in the airport chapel was led by the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy.

In Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington DC in the US, the names of the victims were read out and prayers said at the Pan Am 103 memorial cairn, while New York State’s Syracuse University held a memorial service to remember 35 of its students killed in the attack.

Former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi, was eventually jailed for the attack in 2001 after a lengthy investigation and trial. He is still serving his sentence in a Scottish prison and was recently diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

Al Megrahi continues to deny responsibility for the bombing and will launch a second appeal against his conviction next year.