Lockerbie

On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a further 11 people on the ground. Only one man has ever been convicted of the crime: Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, though few believe that he acted alone. However, author Douglas Boyd conjects that it was Iran, not Libya, who was responsible for the attack. On 3 July 1988 (less than six months before Lockerbie), Iran Air flight 655 was in Iranian airspace on a Bandar Abbas-Dubai flight when it was shot down by missiles from the USS Vincennes sailing illegally into Iranian territorial waters. Ayatollah Khomeyni promised that blood would flow in revenge. However, this line of enquiry was quietly closed and Libya declared guilty because the White House wanted neighbouring Syria and Iran on-side for the build-up to the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Lockerbie is the first book to explore this astonishing theory.