Police and investigators look at the flight deck wreckage(CP photo)

Within a week of the disaster it was clear to investigators that an explosive device had been planted inside the plane. Had the flight departed on time, the evidence would have been swallowed by the ocean. You might say that the 11 victims in the village of Lockerbie gave their lives that the perpetrators might be caught.

Though the wreckage was scattered over a wide area (lighter debris was strewn in a trail 130 km long), investigators pieced together everything, especially anything that showed signs of proximity to the blast. There was luggage that had been transferred from the Frankfurt flight that was clearly at the point of the explosion.

This is from the official technical (as opposed to criminal) investigation report:

"(T)wo adjacent containers, one of metal construction the other fibreglass, were identified as exhibiting damage likely to have been caused by the explosion. Those parts which could be positively identified as being from these two containers were assembled onto one of three simple wooden frameworks, one each for the floor and superstructure of the metal container and one for the superstructure of the fibreglass container. From this it was positively determined that the explosion had occurred within the metal container (serial number AVE 4041 PA), the direct effects of this being evident also on the forward face of the adjacent fibreglass container (serial number AVN 7511 PA) and on the local airframe on the left side of the aircraft in the region of station 700. It was therefore confirmed that this metal container had been loaded in position 14L in agreement with the aircraft loading records. While this work was in progress a buckled section of the metal container skin was found by an AAIB Inspector to contain, trapped within its folds, an item which was subsequently identified by forensic scientists at the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) as belonging to a specific type of radio-cassette player and that this had been fitted with an improvised explosive device (IED)."

The deadly cargo, further investigation suggested, had been first loaded onto an Air Malta flight, transferred in Frankfurt and, ultimately, onto Pan Am Flight 103 in London.

There was no shortage of usual suspects: Palestinians under Abu Nidal, in opposition to the PLO opening talks with the U.S.; Iranians angry at the U.S. downing of an Iran Air passenger jet several months before (a U.S. warship mistakenly took the jet as hostile. Almost 300 people onboard were killed); and, finally, the Libyans.

In February, 1991 after an investigation of several months in Dumfries, Scotland, Sheriff Principal John Mowat QC named a particular Samsonite suitcase as the deadly container. It had been offloaded from the Frankfurt flight and onto Pan Am 103.

Suspects Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, right, and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima (CP photo)

Later that year two Libyans were charged with sending the terrible package from Malta to Frankfurt to London to the skies over Lockerbie. One was Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, an alleged Libyan intelligence agent working for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta. The other, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, also alleged to be involved with Libyan intelligence, also associated with the Libyan airline, was claimed to have bought clothing in stores in Malta, bits and shards of which turned up in the suspect suitcase.