Pan American security officials could have prevented the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, last December had they heeded warnings of terrorist attacks, relatives of the pilot and other crew members charged Friday.
The families of 13 of the 16 crew members killed aboard the ill-fated flight filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing security officials for Pan Am at Frankfurt Airport in West Germany and Heathrow Airport in London of negligence."There were seven events which involved notice from the Federal Aviation Administration or police authorities," said Read McCaffrey, the lawyer representing the surviving relatives of the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer and 10 flight attendants. Families of the other crew members killed on the flight were taking independent legal action, McCaffrey said.
"Three of those were actual warnings (of terrorist attacks) and the other four were warnings concerning terrorist activities that should have caused them to have been much more concerned," McCaffrey said.
Suspected terrorists hid plastic explosives in a radio-cassette recorder loaded aboard the New York-bound Boeing 747, blowing the jetliner out of the sky Dec. 21, 1988. The bombing killed 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
On Friday, Scotland's chief legal official said Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, known as the PFLP-GC, was a leading suspect in the bombing. The group, led by Palestinian extremist Ahmed Jibril, opposes the peace initiatives of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Authorities investigating the crash under Scottish legal procedures will not be able to probe allegations that Pan Am was negligent in its security procedures.