title: Come from Away

text: To alleviate rising fear and mounting tensions ("On The Edge"), the passengers are invited to be initiated as honorary Newfoundlanders at the local bar ("Heave Away / Screech In"). The gravity of the attacks nevertheless continues to set in as US airspace is eventually reopened. One trailblazing pilot, Beverley Bass, comments on how her once optimistic view of the world has suddenly changed ("Me and the Sky"). While one pair of passengers starts to develop a romance despite the terrible thing that brought them together ("Stop the World"), another pair sees their long-term relationship fall apart under the stress of the event.


title: Come from Away

text: As the passengers and crew fly away to their homes, they joyously exchange stories of the immense kindness and generosity that was shown to them by the Newfoundland strangers in their time of need ("Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere"), but not before a Muslim traveler, faced with increasing prejudice from his fellow passengers, undergoes a humiliating strip search prior to boarding. The townsfolk in Gander return to normal life, but comment on how empty their town now seems and how different the world now feels. The passengers and airline staff who return to the United States are faced with the horror of the attacks' aftermath—including Hannah, who learns that her firefighter son died during the rescue efforts ("Something's Missing").


title: Come from Away

text: Ten years later, the crew and passengers (the "come from away") of the once stranded planes reunite in Gander, this time by choice, to celebrate the lifelong friendships and strong connections they formed in spite of the terrorist attacks ("Finale"). As Claude the mayor professes, "Tonight we honour what was lost, but we also commemorate what we found."


title: Come from Away

text: The first professional production was a collaboration by the La Jolla Playhouse and Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2015. The play had extended runs in each location. The musical opened at the La Jolla Playhouse in June 2015, directed by Christopher Ashley and featuring Joel Hatch as the Mayor of Gander, Jenn Colella as Beverley, and Chad Kimball as Kevin. In Seattle, it broke all box office records (including highest grossing show and largest single ticket sales day) at Seattle Repertory Theatre.


title: Come from Away

text: Following its runs in San Diego and Seattle, the show played out-of-town engagements at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., from September 2, 2016, to October 9, 2016, and then at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, from November 15, 2016, to January 8, 2017. The entire run of the Toronto production sold out during its second week of performances. The show's ticket sales set a record for the then 109-year-old Royal Alex Theatre, selling $1.7 million in tickets in a single week. The show could not be extended due to its Broadway commitment but, as a result of the strong demand, Mirvish Productions announced on December 2, 2016, that it was adding an additional four box seats and 12 standing-room locations for the duration of the show. An additional show was also added on the evening of December 18, 2016.


title: Come from Away

text: The musical opened in previews on Broadway on February 18, 2017, and officially opened on March 12, 2017, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. The show has been playing to standing-room-only audiences. Direction is by Christopher Ashley, choreography by Kelly Devine, scenic design by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Howell Binkley, sound design by Gareth Owen, and music direction by Ian Eisendrath. The performance of March 15, 2017, on Broadway was attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who addressed the audience before the show), other current and former Canadian federal politicians and provincial politicians from Newfoundland and Labrador, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and Ivanka Trump.


title: Come from Away

text: On March 12, 2020, the show suspended production due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 10, 2021, it was revealed that the show would be returning to Broadway on September 21. From June 21, 2022, until August 7, 2022, original cast member Jenn Colella briefly returned as Beverley/Annette & others. On June 8, 2022, it was announced that the Broadway production would close on October 2, 2022, after 25 previews and 1,670 regular performances, making it the 49th longest running show on Broadway.


title: Come from Away

text: A second Canadian production opened in a sold-out, four-week run in Winnipeg at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in January 2018. The production began performances at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto on February 13, 2018, and recouped its full capitalization in 14 weeks. Due to continued demand, the show transferred to the nearby Elgin Theatre on February 5, 2019, after ending its run at the Royal Alexandra Theatre on January 20, 2019. During the hiatus, the cast performed eight benefit concerts of the show at the Holy Heart Theatre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. The net proceeds from the performances were donated to Gander, Gambo, Appleton, Lewisporte, Norris Arm, and Glenwood, the six towns that hosted the 7,000 travellers, along with the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Community Food Sharing Association. The production moved to the Elgin Theatre in order to accommodate the Canadian production of "Dear Evan Hansen", which was promised the Royal Alexandra Theatre. On July 3, 2019, following the announced closure of Canadian production of Dear Evan Hansen, it was announced that "Come from Away" would transfer back to the Royal Alexandra Theatre on December 13, 2019. The production closed at the Elgin Theatre on December 1, 2019, in order to facilitate the move. After a 21-month pandemic hiatus beginning in March 2020, Come From Away reopened on December 15, 2021, but closed again on December 22. Although initially hoping to resume on December 28, on December 27 it was announced that Come From Away in Toronto was closed permanently.


title: Come from Away

text: In May 2021, it was announced that the Canadian Production of the musical would be on a limited run at Ottawa's Babs Asper Theatre in July 2024 before returning to Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre in September 2024.


title: Come from Away

text: The musical started its North American tour of more than 50 cities in October 2018 at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, Washington.


title: Come from Away

text: The musical ran at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, from December 2018 to January 2019, before transferring to the Phoenix Theatre in London's West End from January 30, 2019, with a British cast.


title: Come from Away

text: An Australian production opened at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, in July 2019. The Australian Company was planned to tour China, but this was cancelled due to SARS-CoV-2. Although the initial Melbourne Fall Season was cut short due to SARS-CoV-2, a short encore in Melbourne in February 2021 occurred before briefly stopping at Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane before transferring to Capitol Theatre in Sydney. The Melbourne production became the Comedy Theatre's most successful musical in its history.


title: Come from Away

text: The Nordic premiere of the musical took place on September 26, 2020, in Norrköping, Sweden, in a production by Östgötateatern.


title: Come from Away

text: The Argentinian production was announced in April 2020 but postponed to April 2022 due the pandemic, at the Teatro Maipo in Buenos Aires, with Carla Calabrese as Director and a production by The Stage Company.


title: Come from Away

text: Misha Berson, writing for the "Seattle Times", praised Christopher Ashley's fluid staging, calling the show a "meaningful balm to the benumbed psyche." Berson closed the review noting how the show "honors our capacity for humble goodness and mutual empathy in the shadow of faith-shattering evil."


title: Come from Away

text: Jay Irwin with "Broadway World" called the production "emotionally transcendent" and "the best musical I've seen all year and possibly ever."


title: Come from Away

text: David Gerson with "DC Metro Theatre Arts" called the show "one of the most refreshing pieces of art that I have seen in years. The folk and country influenced pop score is tuneful and the cast sings the hell out of it." Peter Marks, in his review in "The Washington Post", noted that the musical "stirs powerful memories of 9/11 ... if the book's mechanics unfold with too much sugar, the score has an infectious, gritty vitality: Especially good is a number set in a Gander pub, choreographed by Kelly Devine, during which a risibly nutty local initiation rite is performed, involving the embrace of a recently caught codfish."


title: Come from Away

text: Kelly Nestruck of "The Globe and Mail" wrote that "the heartwarming musical lives up to the hype" and that "the accessible story, strong emotional core and gorgeous songwriting should not distract from how original and smart this gem of a musical is." Robert Cushman of the "National Post" called the production "outstanding." Liz Braun of the "Toronto Sun" gave the show a perfect 5-star review, writing "Blame Canada: a grim day in American history has been transformed into a joyous and emotional musical about the indomitable human spirit." Alan Henry of "Broadway World" said "You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll be a better person when you leave the theatre. Don't miss 'Come From Away'."


title: Come from Away

text: Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic for "The New York Times," wrote "Try, if you must, to resist the gale of good will that blows out of 'Come From Away,' the big bearhug of a musical that opened on Sunday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. But even the most stalwart cynics may have trouble staying dry-eyed during this portrait of heroic hospitality under extraordinary pressure." He awarded the show the Critics' Pick designation, given to productions the critic believes have particular merit. Joe Dziemianowicz of the "New York Daily News" called the show "big-hearted and crowd-pleasing" and "a singing reminder that when things are at their worst, people can be at their best." Joe Westerfield with "Newsweek" wrote that "'Come From Away' accomplishes what all the best musicals do: It takes you to a place where you didn't know you wanted to go, and makes you not want to leave." Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" called the musical "heartwarming and thoroughly entertaining ... especially in these politically fractious times." Johnny Oleksinski with the "New York Post" wrote that "Every New Yorker must see this show", referring to the musical as "Broadway's biggest and best surprise of the season." Peter Marks of "The Washington Post" called the show "an effervescent musical" and "an antidote for what ails the American soul." Michael Dale of "Broadway World" called the show an "inspiring, funny and kick-ass beautiful new musical" and went on to say that "as long as 'Come From Away' is playing on Broadway, I will recommend it to everyone. Everyone." Steven Suskin, drama critic for "The Huffington Post", wrote that "'Come From Away' is altogether different and altogether gripping, ... brave and new and unusual and overwhelmingly heart-tugging." Robert Kahn with NBC called the piece "a dignified, often funny new musical" which "find[s] a spiritual angle to a horrific story, depicting the goodness in humanity while still allowing us room for the feelings of loneliness and fear that will always be connected to that time." Jennifer Vanasco with WNYC called the show "a love letter – to Newfoundland, to New York, to what people can do if they set aside fear and hate. Don't miss it."


title: Come from Away

text: An original Broadway cast recording was released on March 10, 2017, through Molly Records. It peaked at number 92 on the Top Current Albums chart and number two on the Cast Albums chart.


title: Come from Away

text: In November 2017, it was announced that The Mark Gordon Company would produce a feature film adaptation of the musical, with Sankoff and Hein writing the screenplay and Christopher Ashley as director. In April 2019, Sankoff and Hein stated that the intention was to shoot in Gander and cast lesser-known actors, with Gander residents as extras.


title: Come from Away

text: In February 2021, it was announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the film industry and the performing arts, the film adaptation was cancelled in favor of producing a live recording of the stage production with the members of the Broadway cast reprising their roles, to be released in September 2021 on the 20th anniversary of the attacks. Produced and financed by Entertainment One and RadicalMedia, a May 2021 staging at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater with Ashley directing and Gordon as producer was used. Joining the producing team are Jennifer Todd, Bill Condon and one of the stage production's producers, Junkyard Dog Productions. Sankoff, Hein, Jon Kamen, Dave Sirulnick and Meredith Bennett executive produced. The film employed 222 people, including the members of the New York cast, crew, staff, and creative and film teams. In April 2021, Apple TV+ acquired the film's distribution rights. It was released on September 10, 2021.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by "Clipper Maid of the Seas", a Boeing 747-121 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb that had been planted on board, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom, as well as its deadliest aviation disaster.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, after protracted negotiations and UN sanctions. In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. In August 2009, he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012 as the only person to be convicted for the attack.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In 2003, Gaddafi accepted Libya's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the families of the victims, although he maintained that he had never given the order for the attack. Acceptance of responsibility was part of a series of requirements laid out by a UN resolution for sanctions against Libya to be lifted. Libya said it had to accept responsibility due to Megrahi's status as a government employee.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: During the First Libyan Civil War in 2011, former Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil claimed that the Libyan leader had personally ordered the bombing, though this was later denied, while investigators have long believed that Megrahi did not act alone, and have been reported as questioning retired Stasi agents about a possible role in the attack.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Some relatives of the dead, including Lockerbie campaigner Jim Swire, believe the bomb was planted at Heathrow Airport, and not sent via feeder flights from Malta, as per the US and UK governments. A sleeper cell belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command) had been operating in West Germany in the months before the Pan Am bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In 2020, US authorities indicted the Tunisia resident and Libyan national Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi for participating in the bombing, who was 37 years old at the time of the bombing, and in December 2022, they obtained custody of him.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The aircraft operating Pan Am Flight 103 was a Boeing 747-121, registered and named "Clipper Maid of the Seas"; prior to 1979, it had been named "Clipper Morning Light". It was the 15th 747 built, and was delivered in February 1970, one month after the first 747 entered service with Pan Am. In 1978, as "Clipper Morning Light", it had appeared in "Conquering the Atlantic", the fourth episode of the BBC Television documentary series "Diamonds in the Sky", presented by Julian Pettifer.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Pan Am 103 originated as a feeder flight at Frankfurt Airport, West Germany, using a Boeing 727 and the flight number PA103-A. Both Pan Am and TWA routinely changed the type of aircraft operating different legs of a flight. PA103 was bookable as either a single Frankfurt–New York or a Frankfurt–Detroit itinerary, though a scheduled change of aircraft took place in London's Heathrow Airport.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: After the bombing, the flight number was changed, in accordance with standard practice among airlines after disasters. Within days, the Frankfurt–London–New York–Detroit route was being served by Pan Am Flight 3 until the company's demise in 1991.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On its arrival at Heathrow Terminal 3 on the day of the disaster, the passengers and their luggage (as well as an unaccompanied suitcase which was part of the interline luggage on the feeder flight) were transferred directly to "Clipper Maid of the Seas", whose previous flight had originated in Los Angeles and arrived via San Francisco. The plane, which operated the flight's transatlantic leg, pushed back from the terminal at 18:04 and took off from runway 27R at 18:25, bound for New York JFK Airport and then Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Contrary to many popular accounts of the disaster (though repeated, with reference, below), the flight, which had a scheduled gate departure time of 18:00, left Heathrow airport on time.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: At 18:58, the aircraft established two-way radio contact with Shanwick Oceanic Area Control in Prestwick on 123.95 MHz.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: "Clipper Maid of the Seas" approached the corner of the Solway Firth at 19:01, and crossed the coast at 19:02 UTC. On scope, the aircraft showed transponder code, or "squawk", 0357 and flight level 310. At this point, the "Clipper Maid of the Seas" was flying at on a heading of 316° magnetic, and at a speed of calibrated airspeed. Subsequent analysis of the radar returns by RSRE concluded that the aircraft was tracking 321° (grid) and travelling at a ground speed of .


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: At 19:02:44, Alan Topp, the clearance delivery officer at Shanwick, transmitted its oceanic route clearance. The aircraft did not acknowledge this message. "Clipper Maid of the Seas" "squawk" then flickered off. Air traffic control tried to make contact with the flight, with no response. Then a loud noise was recorded on the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) at 19:02:50. Five radar echoes fanning out appeared, instead of one. Comparison of the CVR to the radar returns showed that, eight seconds after the explosion, the wreckage had a spread. A British Airways pilot, flying the London–Glasgow shuttle near Carlisle, called Scottish authorities to report that he could see a huge fire on the ground.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The explosion punched a 50 cm (20 in) hole on the left side of the fuselage. Investigators from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concluded that no emergency procedures had been started in the cockpit. The CVR, located in the tail section of the aircraft, was found in a field by police searchers within 24 hours. No distress call was recorded; a 180-millisecond hissing noise could be heard as the explosion destroyed the aircraft's communications center. The explosion in the aircraft hold was magnified by the uncontrolled decompression of the fuselage - a large difference in pressure between the aircraft's interior and exterior. The aircraft's elevator- and rudder-control cables had been disrupted and the fuselage pitched downwards and to the left.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the British Department for Transport concluded that the nose of the aircraft was blown off and separated from the main fuselage within three seconds of the explosion. The nose cone was briefly held on by a band of metal, but facing aft, like the lid of a can. It then sheared off, up, and backwards to starboard, striking off the number-three engine and landing some distance outside the town, on a hill in Tundergarth.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The fuselage continued moving forward and down until it reached , when its dive became nearly vertical. Due to the extreme flutter, the vertical stabilizer disintegrated, which in turn produced large yawing movements. As the forward fuselage continued to disintegrate, the flying debris tore off both of the horizontal stabilizers, while the rear fuselage, the remaining three engines, and the fin torque box separated. The rear fuselage, parts of the baggage hold, and three landing gear units landed at Rosebank Crescent. The fuselage consisting of the main wing box structure landed in Sherwood Crescent, destroying three homes and creating a large impact crater. The of jet fuel ignited by the impact started fires, which destroyed several additional houses. Investigators determined that both wings had landed in the Sherwood Crescent crater, saying, "the total absence of debris from the wing primary structure found remote from the crater confirmed the initial impression that the complete wing box structure had been present at the main impact."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The British Geological Survey away at Eskdalemuir registered a seismic event at 19:03:36 measuring 1.6 on the moment magnitude scale, which was attributed to the impact. According to the report, the rest of the wreckage composed of "the complete fuselage forward of approximately station 480 to station 380 and incorporating the flight deck and nose landing gear was found as one piece in a field approximately east of Lockerbie." This field, located opposite Tundergarth Church, is where the wreckage most easily identified with images of the accident in the media fell, having fallen "almost flat on its left side, but with a slight nose-down attitude."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed, as were 11 residents of Lockerbie on the ground. Of the 270 total fatalities, 190 were American citizens and 43 were British citizens. Nineteen other nationalities were represented, with four or fewer passengers per country.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Flight 103 was under the command of Captain James B. MacQuarrie (55), a Pan Am pilot since 1964 with almost 11,000 flight hours, of which over 4,000 had been accrued in 747 aircraft. He previously served three years in the U.S. Navy and five years in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, where he held the rank of major. First Officer Raymond R. Wagner (52), a pilot with Pan Am since 1966 with almost 5,500 hours in the 747 and a total of nearly 12,000 hours, had previously served eight years in the New Jersey National Guard. Flight Engineer Jerry D. Avritt (46), who joined Pan Am in 1980 after 13 years with National Airlines, had more than 8,000 hours of flying time, with nearly 500 hours in the 747. The cockpit crew was based at JFK.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Six of the 13 cabin crew members became naturalized US citizens while working for Pan Am. The cabin crew was based at Heathrow and lived in the London area or commuted from around Europe. All were originally hired by Pan Am and seniority ranged from 9 months to 28 years.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The captain, first officer, flight engineer, a flight attendant and several first-class passengers were found still strapped to their seats inside the nose section when it crashed in Tundergarth. A flight attendant was found alive by a farmer's wife, but died before help could be summoned. Some passengers may have remained alive briefly after impact; a pathologist's report concluded that at least two of these passengers might have survived if they had been found soon enough.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Thirty-five of the passengers were students from Syracuse University, who participated in the university's Division of International Programs Abroad (abbreviated as "DIPA Program" and renamed to "Syracuse University Abroad" in 2006, while also known as "Syracuse Abroad" and "Study Abroad Program") and were returning home for Christmas following a semester in Syracuse's London and European campuses. Ten of these students were from other universities and colleges (including but not limited to Colgate University and University of Colorado) with collaborative relationships with Syracuse.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Many of their bodies were found at Rosebank Crescent, from Sherwood Crescent. The rear fuselage of the plane, where many of them sat, destroyed one of the houses of Rosebank Crescent, 71 Park Place, the home of Lockerbie resident Ella Ramsden, who survived. The bodies of two of these students were never recovered.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Prominent among the passenger victims was the 50-year-old UN Commissioner for Namibia (then South West Africa), Bernt Carlsson, who would have attended the signing ceremony of the New York Accords at the UN headquarters the following day. James Fuller, an American automotive executive who worked for Volkswagen, was returning home from a meeting with Volkswagen executives in Germany. Also aboard was Irish Olympic sailor Peter Dix and rock musician Paul Jeffreys and his wife.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Aboard the flight were U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Special Agents Daniel Emmett O'Connor and Ronald Albert Lariviere. Matthew Gannon, the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in seat 14J, which is located in the business class (branded as "Clipper Class") cabin. A group of US intelligence specialists was on board the flight. Their presence gave rise to speculations and conspiracy theories that one or more of them had been targeted.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Eleven Lockerbie residents on Sherwood Crescent were killed when the wing section hit the house at 13 Sherwood Crescent at more than and exploded, creating a crater long and with a volume of . The property was completely destroyed and its two occupants were killed. Their bodies were never found. Several other houses and their foundations were destroyed, and 21 others were damaged beyond repair.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: A family of four was killed when their house at 15 Sherwood Crescent exploded. A couple and their daughter were killed by the explosion in their house at 16 Sherwood Crescent. Their son witnessed a fireball engulfing his home from a neighbour's garage, where he had been repairing his sister's bicycle. The other Lockerbie residents who died were two widows aged 82 and 81, who also both lived in Sherwood Crescent; they were the two oldest victims of the disaster. The bodies of both 15 Sherwood Crescent children and both 16 Sherwood Crescent parents were never recovered.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Patrick Keegans, Lockerbie's Roman Catholic priest, was preparing to visit friends around 7:00 that evening with his mother, having recently been appointed a parish priest of the town. Keegans' house at 1 Sherwood Crescent was the only one on the street that was not either destroyed by the impact or gutted by fire. According to a BBC article on the fire published in 2018, Keegans had gone upstairs to make sure that he had hidden his mother's Christmas present, and recalls, "Immediately after that, there was an enormous explosion". The same source claims that, following this, "the shaking stopped and to his surprise he was uninjured". Keegans' mother was also unharmed, having been shielded from debris by a refrigerator-freezer.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Many of the passengers' relatives, most of them from the US, arrived there within days to identify the dead. Volunteers from Lockerbie set up and staffed canteens which stayed open 24 hours a day and offered relatives, soldiers, police officers, and social workers free sandwiches, hot meals, beverages, and counseling. The people of the town washed, dried, and ironed every piece of clothing that was found once the police had determined they were of no forensic value, so that as many items as possible could be returned to the relatives. The BBC's Scotland correspondent, Andrew Cassell, reported on the 10th anniversary of the bombing that the townspeople had "opened their homes and hearts" to the relatives, bearing their own losses "stoically and with enormous dignity", and that the bonds forged then continued to that day.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 5 December 1988 (16 days prior to the attack), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin saying that, on that day, a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and told them that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States would be blown up within the next two weeks by someone associated with the Abu Nidal Organization; he said a Finnish woman would carry the bomb on board as an unwitting courier.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The anonymous warning was taken seriously by the US government and the State Department cabled the bulletin to dozens of embassies. The FAA sent it to all US carriers, including Pan Am, which had charged each of the passengers a $5 security surcharge, promising a "program that will screen passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage, and aircraft with unrelenting thoroughness"; the security team in Frankfurt found the warning under a pile of papers on a desk the day after the bombing. One of the Frankfurt security screeners, whose job was to spot explosive devices under X-ray, told ABC News that she had first learned what Semtex (a plastic explosive) was during her ABC interview 11 months after the bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 13 December, the warning was posted on bulletin boards in the US Embassy in Moscow and eventually distributed to the entire American community there, including journalists and businessmen.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Just days before the sabotage of the aircraft, security forces in European countries, including the UK, were put on alert after a warning from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that extremists might launch terrorist attacks to undermine the then-ongoing dialogue between the United States and the PLO.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On the day of the bombing, the French Directorate-General for External Security was informed by their British counterpart that the UK suspected the Libyans to be behind the bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: According to a CIA analysis dated 22 December 1988, several groups were quick to claim responsibility in telephone calls in the United States and Europe:


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The list's author noted, "We consider the claims from the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution as the most credible one received so far," but the analysis concluded, "We cannot assign responsibility for this tragedy to any terrorist group at this time. We anticipate that, as often happens, many groups will seek to claim credit."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Muammar Gaddafi took responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the victims' families in 2003, though he maintained that he had not ordered the attack. On 22 February 2011, during the Libyan Civil War, former Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil stated in an interview with the Swedish newspaper "Expressen" that Gaddafi had personally ordered the bombing. Jalil claimed to possess "documents that prove [his allegations] and [that he is] ready to hand them over to the international criminal court."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In December 2013, the original prime suspects in the bombing were revealed to have been the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syria-based group led by Ahmed Jibril. A flood of warnings immediately preceding the disaster had included one that read: 'team of Palestinians not associated with PLO intends to attack US targets in Europe. Time frame is present. Targets specified are Pan Am Airlines and US military bases.' Five weeks before this warning, Jibril's right-hand man, Haffez Dalkamoni, had been arrested in Frankfurt with a known bomb-maker, Marwen Khreesat. "Later US intelligence officials confirmed that members of the group had been monitoring Pan Am's facilities at Frankfurt airport. On Dalkamoni's account bombs made by Khreesat were at large somewhere." A deep-cover CIA agent was told by up to 15 high-level Syrian officials that the PFLP-GC was involved and that officials interacted with Jibril "on a constant basis". In 2014, an Iranian ex-spy asserted that Iran ordered the attack. The Iranian foreign ministry swiftly denied any involvement.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The initial investigation into the crash site by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary involved many helicopter surveys, satellite imaging, and a search of the area by police and soldiers. The wreckage of the crash was scattered over , and AAIB investigators were confronted by a massive jigsaw puzzle in trying to piece the plane back together. In total, 4 million pieces of wreckage were collected and registered on computer files. More than 10,000 pieces of debris were retrieved, tagged, and entered into a computer tracking system. The perpetrators had apparently intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but its explosion over land left a trail of evidence.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The fuselage of the aircraft was reconstructed by air accident investigators, revealing a hole consistent with an explosion in the forward cargo hold. Examination of the baggage containers revealed that the container nearest the hole had blackening, pitting, and severe damage, indicating a "high-energy event" had taken place inside it. A series of test explosions was carried out to confirm the precise location and quantity of explosive used.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Fragments of a Samsonite suitcase believed to have contained the bomb were recovered, together with parts and pieces of circuit board identified as components of a Toshiba 'Bombeat' RT-SF16, radio cassette player, similar to that used to conceal a Semtex bomb seized by West German police from the Palestinian militant group PLO-GC two months earlier. Items of baby clothing, which were subsequently proven to have been made in Malta, were thought to have come from the same suitcase.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The clothes were traced to a Maltese merchant, Tony Gauci, who became a key prosecution witness, testifying that he sold the clothes to a man of Libyan appearance. Gauci was interviewed 23 times, giving contradictory evidence about who had bought the clothes, that person's age and appearance, and the date of purchase, but later identified Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. As Megrahi had only been in Malta on 7 December, that date was assumed to be the purchase date. This date is in doubt, as Gauci had testified that Malta's Christmas lights had not been on when the clothes had been purchased; the lights were later found to have been switched on on 6 December. Scottish police had also failed to inform the defence that another witness had testified seeing Libyan men making a similar purchase on a different day. An official report, providing information not made available to the defence during the original trial, stated that on 19 April 1999, four days before identifying al-Megrahi for the first time, Gauci had seen a picture of al-Megrahi in a magazine that connected him to the bombing, a fact that could have distorted his judgement. Gauci was shown the same magazine during his testimony at al-Megrahi's trial and asked if he had identified the photograph in April 1999 as being the person who purchased the clothing; he was then asked if that person was in the court. Gauci then identified al-Megrahi for the court, stating, "He is the man on this side. He resembles him a lot".


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: A circuit board fragment, allegedly found embedded in a piece of charred material, was identified as part of an electronic timer similar to one found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested 10 months previously for carrying materials for a Semtex bomb. The timer was allegedly traced through its Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, to the Libyan military, and Mebo employee Ulrich Lumpert identified the fragment at al-Megrahi's trial. Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, testified at the trial that the Scottish police had originally shown him a fragment of a brown eight-ply circuit board from a prototype timer which had never been supplied to Libya. Yet the sample he was asked to identify at the trial was a green 9-ply circuit board that Mebo had indeed supplied to Libya. Bollier wanted to pursue this discrepancy, but was told by trial judge Lord Sutherland that he could not do so. Bollier claimed that in 1991 he had declined an offer of $4 million from the FBI (equivalent to $ million in dollars) in exchange for his support of the main line of inquiry, though this claim has never been verified.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Known as the Lockerbie bombing and the Lockerbie air disaster in the UK, it was described by Scotland's Lord Advocate as the UK's largest criminal inquiry led by the smallest police force in Britain, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: After a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US FBI, during which 15,000 witness statements were taken, indictments for murder were issued on 13 November 1991 against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager in Luqa Airport, Malta. UN sanctions against Libya and protracted negotiations with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi secured the handover of the accused on 5 April 1999 to Scottish police at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, which was selected as a neutral venue for their trial.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Both of the accused chose not to give evidence in court. On 31 January 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges, and sentenced to life imprisonment, but Fhimah was acquitted. Megrahi's appeal against his conviction was refused on 14 March 2002, and his application to the European Court of Human Rights was declared inadmissible in July 2003. On 23 September 2003, Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for his conviction to be reviewed, and on 28 June 2007, the SCCRC announced its decision to refer the case to the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh after it found he "may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Megrahi served just over 10 years of his sentence (beginning 5 April 1999), first in Barlinnie prison, Glasgow, and later in Greenock prison, Renfrewshire, throughout which time he maintained that he was innocent of the charges against him. He was released from prison on compassionate grounds on 20 August 2009.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In October 2015, Scottish prosecutors announced that they wanted to interview two Libyan nationals, whom they had identified as new suspects, over the bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 21 December 2020, the 32nd anniversary of the disaster, the United States attorney general announced that Abu Agela Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, a Libyan national in custody in Libya, had been charged with terrorism-related crimes in connection with the bombing, accusing him of involvement in constructing the bomb.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 11 December 2022, the United States advised they had Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi in custody.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 3 May 2000, the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah began. Megrahi was found guilty of 270 counts of murder on 31 January 2001, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland; his co-defendant, Fhimah, was found not guilty.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The defence team had 14 days in which to appeal against Megrahi's conviction, and an additional six weeks to submit the full grounds of the appeal. These were considered by a judge sitting in private who decided to grant Megrahi leave to appeal. The only basis for an appeal under Scots law is that a "miscarriage of justice" had occurred, which is not defined in statute, so the appeal court must determine the meaning of these words in each case. Because three judges and one alternate judge had presided over the trial, five judges were required to preside over the Court of Criminal Appeal: Lord Cullen, Lord Justice-General, Lord Kirkwood, Lord Osborne, Lord Macfadyen, and Lord Nimmo Smith.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In what was described as a milestone in Scottish legal history, Lord Cullen granted the BBC permission in January 2002 to televise the appeal, and to broadcast it on the Internet in English with a simultaneous Arabic translation.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: William Taylor QC, leading the defence, said at the appeal's opening on 23 January 2002 that the three trial judges sitting without a jury had failed to see the relevance of "significant" evidence and had accepted unreliable facts. He argued that the verdict was not one that a reasonable jury in an ordinary trial could have reached if it were given proper directions by the judge. The grounds of the appeal rested on two areas of evidence where the defence claimed the original court was mistaken: the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, which the judges accepted as sufficient to prove that the "primary suitcase" started its journey in Malta; and, disputing the prosecution's case, fresh evidence would be adduced to show that the bomb's journey actually started at Heathrow. That evidence, which was not heard at the trial, showed that at some time in the two hours before 00:35 on 21 December 1988, a padlock had been forced on a secure door giving access air side in Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport, near to the area referred to at the trial as the "baggage build-up area". Taylor claimed that the PA 103 bomb could have been planted then.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 14 March 2002, Lord Cullen took less than three minutes to deliver the decision of the High Court of Judiciary. The five judges rejected the appeal, ruling unanimously that "none of the grounds of appeal was well-founded", adding "this brings proceedings to an end". The following day, a helicopter took Megrahi from Camp Zeist to continue his life sentence in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Megrahi's lawyers applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on 23 September 2003 to have his case referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal for a fresh appeal against conviction. The application to the SCCRC followed the publication of two reports in February 2001 and March 2002 by Hans Köchler, who had been an international observer at Camp Zeist, appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Köchler described the decisions of the trial and appeal courts as a "spectacular miscarriage of justice". Köchler also issued a series of statements in 2003, 2005, and 2007 calling for an independent international inquiry into the case and accusing the West of "double standards in criminal justice" in relation to the Lockerbie trial on the one hand and the HIV trial in Libya on the other.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 28 June 2007, the SCCRC announced its decision to refer Megrahi's case to the High Court for a second appeal against conviction. The SCCRC's decision was based on facts set out in an 800-page report that determined that "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred". Köchler criticised the SCCRC for exonerating police, prosecutors and forensic staff from blame in respect of Megrahi's alleged wrongful conviction. He told "The Herald" of 29 June 2007: "No officials to be blamed, simply a Maltese shopkeeper." Köchler also highlighted the role of intelligence services in the trial and stated that proper judicial proceedings could not be conducted under conditions in which extrajudicial forces are allowed to intervene.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: A procedural hearing at the Appeal Court took place on 11 October 2007 when prosecution lawyers and Megrahi's defence counsel, Maggie Scott QC, discussed a number of legal issues with a panel of three judges. One of the issues concerned a number of documents that were shown before the trial to the prosecution, but were not disclosed to the defence. The documents are understood to relate to the Mebo MST-13 timer that allegedly detonated the PA103 bomb. Maggie Scott also asked for documents relating to an alleged payment of $2 million made to Maltese merchant, Tony Gauci, for his testimony at the trial, which led to the conviction of Megrahi.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 15 October 2008, five Scottish judges decided unanimously to reject a submission by the Crown Office, which sought to limit the scope of Megrahi's second appeal to the specific grounds of appeal that were identified by the SCCRC in June 2007. In January 2009, it was reported that, although Megrahi's second appeal against conviction was scheduled to begin in April 2009, the hearing could last as long as 12 months because of the complexity of the case and volume of material to be examined. The second appeal began on 28 April 2009, lasted for one month and was adjourned in May 2009. On 7 July 2009, the court reassembled for a procedural hearing and was told that because of the illness of one of the judges, Lord Wheatley, who was recovering from heart surgery, the final two substantive appeal sessions would run from 2 November to 11 December 2009, and 12 January to 26 February 2010. Megrahi's lawyer Maggie Scott expressed dismay at the delays: "There is a very serious danger that my client will die before the case is determined."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 25 July 2009, Megrahi applied to be released from jail on compassionate grounds. Three weeks later, on 12 August 2009, Megrahi applied to have his second appeal dropped and was granted compassionate release for his terminal prostate cancer. On 20 August 2009, Megrahi was released from prison and travelled by chartered jet to Libya.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: His survival beyond the approximate "three-month" prognosis generated some controversy. It is believed that, following his release, Al-Megrahi was prescribed abiraterone and prednisone, a combination that extends median survival by an average of 14.8 months. After hospital treatment ended, he returned to his family home. Following his release, Megrahi published evidence on the Internet that was gathered for the abandoned second appeal which he claimed would clear his name.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Allegations have been made that the UK government and BP sought Al-Megrahi's release as part of a trade deal with Libya. In 2008, the UK government "decided to 'do all it could' to help the Libyans get Al-Megrahi home ... and explained the legal procedure for compassionate release to the Libyans."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Megrahi was released on licence, so was obliged to remain in regular contact with East Renfrewshire Council. On 26 August 2011, it was announced that the whereabouts of Al-Megrahi were unknown due to the social upheaval in Libya and that he had not been in contact for some time. As reported on 29 August, he had been located and both the Scottish government and council issued a statement confirming that they had been in contact with his family and that his licence had not been breached. MP Andrew Mitchell said Al-Megrahi was comatose and near death. CNN reporter Nic Robertson said he was "just a shell of the man he once was" and was surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip. In an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton called for Al-Megrahi to be extradited.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: To me it will be a signal of how serious the rebel government is for good relations with the United States and the West if they hand over Megrahi for trial.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Mohammed al-Alagi, justice minister for the new leadership in Tripoli, said "the council would not allow any Libyan to be deported to face trial in another country ... Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has already been judged once, and will not be judged again." Megrahi died of prostate cancer in Libya on 20 May 2012. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said that people should use the occasion to remember the Lockerbie victims.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In 2020, US authorities indicted Libyan national, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, for participating in the bombing. In December 2022, the United States government obtained custody of 71-year-old Mas'ud.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: According to The New York Times, Mas'ud was born in Tunisia in 1951, before he became a citizen of Liberia as a child after he moved to Tripoli, Libya. Beginning at the age of 22 in 1973, he began working with bombs for the Libyan intelligence service for the next 38 years. Shortly after finishing his longtime run at the job, Mas'ud was arrested and imprisoned in Misurata, Libya before being moved to Al-Hadba prison in Tripoli, which happened shortly after the fall of Colonel el-Qaddafi in 2011.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: After the United States government obtained custody of Mas'ud, heads of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committees of the Libyan Parliament, Talal al-Mihoub and Youssef al-Aqouri, demanded an urgent investigation into the extradition of Mas'ud, calling it a blatant violation of national sovereignty and an infringement of the rights of the Libyan citizen. They stressed that the case file had been completely closed politically and legally, according to the text of the agreement signed between the United States and Libya in 2003.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Until 2002, Libya had never formally admitted carrying out the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. On 16 August 2003, Libya formally admitted responsibility for Pan Am Flight 103 in a letter presented to the president of the United Nations Security Council. Felicity Barringer of "The New York Times" said that the letter had "general language that lacked any expression of remorse" for the people killed in the bombing. The letter stated that it "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials".


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The motive that is generally attributed to Libya can be traced back to a series of military confrontations with the US Navy that took place in the 1980s in the Gulf of Sidra, the whole of which Libya claimed as its territorial waters. First, there was the Gulf of Sidra incident (1981) when two Libyan fighter aircraft were shot down by two US Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters. Then, two Libyan radio ships were sunk in the Gulf of Sidra. Later, on 23 March 1986, a Libyan Navy patrol boat was sunk in the Gulf of Sidra, followed by the sinking of another Libyan vessel on 25 March 1986. The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was accused of retaliating for these sinkings by ordering the April 1986 bombing of La Belle, a West Berlin nightclub frequented by US military personnel, killing three people and injuring 230.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The US National Security Agency's (NSA) alleged interception of an incriminatory message from Libya to its embassy in East Berlin provided US President Ronald Reagan with the justification for Operation El Dorado Canyon on 15 April 1986, with US Navy and US Marine Corps warplanes launching from three aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Sidra and US Air Force warplanes launching from two British bases—the first US military strikes from Britain since World War II—against Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya. The Libyan government claimed the air strikes killed Hana Gaddafi, a daughter Gaddafi claimed he adopted (her reported age has varied between 15 months and seven years). To avenge his daughter's supposed death (Hana or Hanna's actual fate remains disputed), Gaddafi is said to have sponsored the September 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In turn, the US encouraged the Chadian National Armed Forces (FANT) and it also aided them by supplying them with satellite intelligence during the Battle of Maaten al-Sarra. The attack resulted in a devastating defeat for Gaddafi's forces, following which he had to accede to a ceasefire ending the Chadian-Libyan conflict and his dreams of African dominance. Gaddafi blamed the defeat on French and US "aggression against Libya". The result was Gaddafi's lingering animosity against the two countries which led to Libyan support for the bombings of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Prior to the abandonment of Megrahi's second appeal against conviction and while new evidence could be still tested in court, there had been few calls for an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing. Demands for such an inquiry emerged later, and became more insistent. On 2 September 2009, former MEP Michael McGowan demanded that the UK government call for an urgent, independent inquiry led by the UN to find out the truth about Pan Am flight 103. "We owe it to the families of the victims of Lockerbie and the international community to identify those responsible," McGowan said. Two online petitions were started: one calling for a UK public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing; the other a UN inquiry into the murder of UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. In September 2009, a third petition which was addressed to the President of the United Nations General Assembly demanded that the UN should "institute a full public inquiry" into the Lockerbie disaster. On 3 October 2009, Malta was asked to table a UN resolution supporting the petition, which was signed by 20 people including the families of the Lockerbie victims, authors, journalists, professors, politicians and parliamentarians, as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The signatories considered that a UN inquiry could help remove "many of the deep misgivings which persist in lingering over this tragedy" and could also eliminate Malta from this terrorist act. Malta was brought into the case because the prosecution argued that the two accused Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, had placed the bomb on an Air Malta aircraft before it was transferred at Frankfurt airport to a feeder flight destined for London's Heathrow airport, from which Pan Am Flight 103 departed. The Maltese government responded saying that the demand for a UN inquiry was "an interesting development that would be deeply considered, although there were complex issues surrounding the event."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 24 August 2009, Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire wrote to Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, calling for a full inquiry, including the question of suppression of the Heathrow evidence. This was backed up by a delegation of Lockerbie relatives, led by Pamela Dix, who went to 10 Downing Street on 24 October 2009 and handed over a letter addressed to Gordon Brown calling for a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss the need for a public inquiry and the main issues that it should address. An op-ed article by Pamela Dix, subtitled "The families of those killed in the bombing have not given up hope of an inquiry to help us learn the lessons of this tragedy", was published in "The Guardian" on 26 October 2009. On 1 November 2009, it was reported that Gordon Brown had ruled out a public inquiry into Lockerbie, saying in response to Dr Swire's letter: "I understand your desire to understand the events surrounding the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 but I do not think it would be appropriate for the UK government to open an inquiry of this sort." UK ministers explained that it was for the Scottish Government to decide if it wants to hold its own, more limited, inquiry into the worst terrorist attack on British soil. The Scottish Government had already rejected an independent inquiry, saying it lacks the constitutional power to examine the international dimensions of the case.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 23 February 2011, amidst the Libyan Civil War, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, former Libyan Justice Minister (and later member and Chairman of the anti-Gaddafi National Transitional Council), alleged that he had evidence that Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, had personally ordered Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to bomb Pan Am Flight 103.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In a July 2021 interview, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam said that his father "had stopped riding his horse after the humiliation of the American bombing of Tripoli in 1986 and resumed riding it after the Lockerbie bombing."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Based on a 1995 investigation by journalists Paul Foot and John Ashton, alternative explanations of the plot to commit the Lockerbie bombing were listed by "The Guardian"'s Patrick Barkham in 1999. Following the Lockerbie verdict in 2001 and the appeal in 2002, attempts have been made to re-open the case amid allegations that Libya was framed. One theory suggests the bomb on the plane was detonated by radio. Another theory suggests the CIA prevented the suitcase containing the bomb from being searched. Iran's involvement is alleged, either in association with a Palestine militant group, or in loading the bomb while the plane was at Heathrow. The US Defense Intelligence Agency alleges that Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur ("Ayatollah Mohtashemi"), a member of the Iranian government, paid US$10 million for the bombing:


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: French investigative journalist Pierre Péan accused Thomas Thurman, a Federal Bureau of Investigation explosives expert, of fabricating false evidence against Libya in both the Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772 sabotages.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 29 September 1989, President Bush appointed Ann McLaughlin Korologos, former Secretary of Labor, to chair the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of flight PA103. Oliver Revell, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director, was assigned to advise and assist PCAST in their task.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Before they submitted their report, the PCAST members met a group of British PA103 relatives at the US embassy in London on 12 February 1990. One of the British relatives, Martin Cadman, alleges that a member of President Bush's staff told him: "Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they are never going to tell." The statement first came to public attention in the 1994 documentary film "The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie" and was published in both "The Guardian" of 12 November 1994, and a special report from "Private Eye" magazine entitled "Lockerbie, the flight from justice" May/June 2001.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 29 May 2002, Libya offered up to US$2.7 billion to settle claims by the families of the 270 killed in the Lockerbie bombing, representing US$10 million per family. The Libyan offer was that 40% of the money would be released when United Nations sanctions, suspended in 1999, were cancelled; another 40% when US trade sanctions were lifted; and the final 20% when the US State Department removed Libya from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Jim Kreindler of the New York law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, which orchestrated the settlement, said: "These are uncharted waters. It is the first time that any of the states designated as sponsors of terrorism have offered compensation to families of terror victims." The US State Department maintained that it was not directly involved. "Some families want cash, others say it is blood money", said a State Department official.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Compensation for the families of the PA103 victims was among the steps set by the UN for lifting its sanctions against Libya. Other requirements included a formal denunciation of terrorism—which Libya said it had already made—and "accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials".


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 15 August 2003, Libya's UN ambassador, Ahmed Own, submitted a letter to the UN Security Council formally accepting "responsibility for the actions of its officials" in relation to the Lockerbie bombing. The Libyan government then proceeded to pay compensation to each family of US$8 million (from which legal fees of about US$2.5 million were deducted) and, as a result, the UN cancelled the sanctions that had been suspended four years earlier, and US trade sanctions were lifted. A further US$2 million would have gone to each family had the US State Department removed Libya from its list of states regarded as supporting international terrorism, but as this did not happen by the deadline set by Libya, the Libyan Central Bank withdrew the remaining US$540 million in April 2005 from the escrow account in Switzerland through which the earlier US$2.16 billion compensation for the victims' families had been paid. The United States announced resumption of full diplomatic relations with Libya after deciding to remove it from its list of countries that support terrorism on 15 May 2006.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 24 February 2004, Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem stated in a BBC Radio 4 interview that his country had paid the compensation as the "price for peace" and to secure the lifting of sanctions. Asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said, "I agree with that." He also said there was no evidence to link Libya with the April 1984 shooting of police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Gaddafi later retracted Ghanem's comments, under pressure from Washington and London.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: A civil action against Libya continued until 18 February 2005 on behalf of Pan Am and its insurers, which went bankrupt partly as a result of the attack. The airline was seeking $4.5 billion for the loss of the aircraft and the effect on the airline's business.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In the wake of the SCCRC's June 2007 decision, there have been suggestions that, if Megrahi's second appeal had been successful and his conviction had been overturned, Libya could have sought to recover the $2.16 billion compensation paid to the relatives. Interviewed by French newspaper "Le Figaro" on 7 December 2007, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$33 billion in total), Saif Gaddafi replied: "I don't know".


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Following discussions in London in May 2008, US and Libyan officials agreed to start negotiations to resolve all outstanding bilateral compensation claims, including those relating to UTA Flight 772, the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing and Pan Am Flight 103. On 14 August 2008, a US-Libya compensation deal was signed in Tripoli by US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Libya's Foreign Ministry head of America affairs, Ahmed al-Fatroui. The agreement covers 26 lawsuits filed by American citizens against Libya, and three by Libyan citizens in respect of the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986 which killed at least 40 people and injured 220. In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: As a result, President Bush signed restoring the Libyan government's immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in the US, the White House said. US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, called the move a "laudable milestone ... clearing the way for a continued and expanding US-Libyan partnership."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In an interview shown in BBC Two's "The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie" on 31 August 2008, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as very greedy: "They were asking for more money and more money and more money". Several of the victims families refused to accept compensation due to their belief that Libya was not responsible.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen on 23 February 2011, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, former Justice Secretary of Libya, claimed to have evidence that Gaddafi personally ordered Al-Megrahi to carry out the bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Quotes: "[Jalil] told Expressen Khadafy [sic] gave the order to Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground on 21 December 1988.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: 'To hide it, he (Khadafy) did everything in his power to get al-Megrahi back from Scotland,' Abdel-Jalil was quoted as saying."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Al Jalil's commentary to the Expressen came during widespread political unrest and protests in Libya calling for the removal of Ghaddafi from power. The protests were part of a massive wave of unprecedented uprisings across the Arab world in: Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain and Egypt, where Egyptian protesters effectively forced the removal of long-term ruler, Hosni Mubarak, from office. Jalil's comments came on a day when Ghaddafi's defiance and refusal to leave his command prompted his brutal attacks on Libyan protesters.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Abdel-Jalil stepped down as minister of justice in protest over the violence against anti-government demonstrations.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 5 December 2003, Jim Kreindler revealed that his Park Avenue law firm would receive an initial contingency fee of around US$1 million from each of the 128 American families Kreindler represents. The firm's fees could exceed US$300 million eventually. Kreindler argued that the fees were justified, since "Over the past seven years we have had a dedicated team working tirelessly on this and we deserve the contingency fee we have worked so hard for, and I think we have provided the relatives with value for money."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Another top legal firm in the US, Speiser Krause, which represented 60 relatives, of whom half were UK families, concluded contingency deals securing them fees of between 28 and 35% of individual settlements. Frank Granito of Speiser Krause noted that "the rewards in the US are more substantial than anywhere else in the world but nobody has questioned the fee whilst the work has been going on, it is only now as we approach a resolution when the criticism comes your way."


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In March 2009, it was announced that US lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, received fees of $2 million for the work it did from 2006 through 2008 helping the PA103 relatives obtain payment by Libya of the final $2 million compensation (out of a total of $10 million) that was due to each family.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: In 1992, a US federal court found Pan Am guilty of willful misconduct due to lax security screening caused by not implementing baggage reconciliation, a new security program mandated by the FAA prior to the incident, which requires unaccompanied luggage to be searched by hand and to ensure passengers board flights onto which they have checked baggage; Pan Am relied more on the less-effective method of x-ray screening. Two of Pan Am's subsidiaries, Alert Management Inc., which handles Pan Am's security at foreign airports, and Pan American World Services, were also found guilty.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: There are several private and public memorials to the PA103 victims. "Dark Elegy" is the work of sculptor Suse Lowenstein of Long Island, whose son Alexander, then 21, was a passenger on the flight. The work consists of 43 nude statues of the wives and mothers who lost a husband or a child. Inside each sculpture there is a personal memento of the victim.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: On 3 November 1995, then-US President Bill Clinton dedicated a Memorial Cairn to the victims at Arlington National Cemetery, and there are similar memorials at Syracuse University; Dryfesdale Cemetery, near Lockerbie; and in Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: Syracuse University holds a memorial week every year called "Remembrance Week" to commemorate its 35 lost students. Every 21 December, a service is held in the university's chapel at 14:03 (19:03 UTC), marking the moment the bomb on board the aircraft was detonated. The university also awards university tuition fees to two students from Lockerbie Academy each year, in the form of its Lockerbie scholarship. In addition, the university annually awards 35 scholarships to seniors to honour each of the 35 students killed. The "Remembrance Scholarships" are among the highest honors a Syracuse undergraduate can receive. SUNY Oswego also gives out scholarships in memorial of Colleen Brunner to a student who is studying abroad. A memorial plaque and garden in memory of its two students lost in the bombing is set in the University of Rochester's Eastman Quadrangle.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: "The Women of Lockerbie" (2003) is a play written by Deborah Brevoort which depicts a woman from New Jersey roaming the hills of Lockerbie, Scotland. This mother tragically lost her son in the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103. While in Lockerbie, 7 years after the flight, she meets the women who witnessed and were affected by the crash itself while she attempts to find closure. This play has received the Silver Medal from the Onassis International Playwriting Competition and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The main UK memorial is at Dryfesdale Cemetery about west of Lockerbie. There is a semicircular stone wall in the garden of remembrance with the names and nationalities of all the victims along with individual funeral stones and memorials. Inside the chapel at Dryfesdale there is a book of remembrance. There are memorials in Lockerbie and Moffat Roman Catholic churches, where plaques list the names of all 270 victims. In Lockerbie Town Hall Council Chambers, there is a stained-glass window depicting flags of the 21 countries whose citizens lost their lives in the disaster. There is also a book of remembrance at Lockerbie public library and another at Tundergarth Church. In Sherwood Crescent there is a garden of remembrance to the seven Lockerbie residents killed when the aircraft's main wreckage fell there, destroying their homes.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The Air Accidents Investigation Branch reassembled a large part of the fuselage to aid with the investigation; this has been retained as evidence and stored in a hangar at Farnborough Airport since the bombing.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: As of 2008, the remaining wreckage of the aircraft was stored about a mile from Tattershall, Lincolnshire, at Roger Windley's scrapyard (), pending the conclusion of the American victims' civil case and further legal proceedings. The remains include the nose section of the Boeing 747, which was cut into several pieces to assist in removal from Tundergarth Hill.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: It was announced in April 2013 that part of the wreckage was transferred to a secure location in Dumfries, Scotland, and that it remains evidence in the ongoing criminal investigation.


title: Pan Am Flight 103

text: The bombing of Flight 103 has been depicted in many documentaries, such as "Air Crash Investigation" and the BBC. The bombing is also compared with the death of actor Brandon Lee on the track “Gold” off of hip-hop artist GZA’s 1995 album "Liquid Swords", in the lyric, "Snake got smoked on the set like Brandon Lee, blown out the frame like Pan Am Flight 103."


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Sara Elena Ramírez (; born August 31, 1975) is a Mexican-American actor and singer. Born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Ramírez moved to the United States at eight years old, eventually graduating with a fine arts degree from the Juilliard School.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez began acting in Broadway productions, making their debut in Paul Simon's "The Capeman", and later ventured into film and television roles. Ramírez's breakthrough came with their portrayal of the original Lady of the Lake in the 2005 Broadway musical "Spamalot", winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Ramírez was offered to pick their own primetime television show in an array of ABC lineups, choosing "Grey's Anatomy". They portrayed Dr. Callie Torres, one of the longest-running LGBT characters in US television history, appearing in 11 seasons and 239 episodes. Ramírez's volunteered addition of the character's bisexuality marked one of the earliest series regular queer roles on primetime television. After departing from the series, Ramirez came out as bisexual and later non-binary, using they/them pronouns. They later portrayed the bisexual, non-binary roles of Kat Sandoval in "Madam Secretary" and Che Díaz in "And Just Like That...", respectively.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramirez debuted as a voice actor in the 1999 video game entitled "Um Jammer Lammy", and has voiced Queen Miranda in the animated series "Sofia the First" (2012–2018). Ramírez released their first single "Silent Night" in 2009. Their self-titled EP debuted at no. 37 on the "Billboard 200" in 2011.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez's extensive campaigns for LGBT rights won the Ally for Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation in 2015. Ramírez has also been the recipient of a Tony Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Satellite Award, among other accolades.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez was born on August 31, 1975, in Mazatlán, Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. Ramírez's father and mother are Mexican. When Ramírez was eight years old, their parents divorced, and Ramírez went to live with their mother, eventually settling in Tierrasanta, San Diego, California. Ramírez's interest in music encouraged their mother to send them to San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, where their singing talent was discovered during an audition. Ramírez started acting in stage productions in high school.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: After having played such roles as the Witch in "Into the Woods", Dolly in "Hello, Dolly!" and Miss Hannigan in "Annie", Ramírez was recommended for the Juilliard School, New York City, from which they graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts (dramatics). At Juilliard, Ramírez further worked on their acting skills and trained as a vocalist. Ramírez speaks both Spanish and English fluently.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: While still at Juilliard, Ramírez was discovered by a casting director and was offered the role of Wahzinak in Paul Simon's 1998 Broadway musical "The Capeman". Based on the life of the Puerto Rican gangster Salvador Agron, the production garnered negative reviews, but Ramirez was singled out for their "outstanding" performance. They made their screen debut in the same year, with a minor yet "memorable" role in the romantic comedy "You've Got Mail". Starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the film had Ramírez play Rose, a Zabar's cashier who was ""very serious" about her line's cash-only policy." Ramirez voiced the titular character of Lammy in the video game "UmJammer Lammy", a spin-off of "PaRappa the Rapper", on Sony's PlayStation console. They later reprised their role in the latter's sequel for PlayStation 2, but had a smaller role.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: In 1999, Ramírez appeared in Mark Lamos' "The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm" (1999). They garnered praise for their performance and received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for their role. Charles Isherwood of "Variety" praised their "beautiful, smoky voice" but was critical of their "torchy" performance of "The Man I Love," which ignored "the wry irony that infuses Ira's lyrics". Ramirez then appeared in the 2001 Broadway production of Edward Kleban's "A Class Act". They replaced Julia Murney (from the off-Broadway) to play the role of Felecia, the protagonist Ed's boss. The same year, they starred in other productions including "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Dreamgirls", and then performed in the 2002 production of "The Vagina Monologues" with Tovah Feldshuh and Suzanne Bertish. During this time, Ramírez also appeared in guest roles in several television series, including "NYPD Blue", "", "Third Watch", and "Spin City" among others.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez's breakout role came upon being cast as the Lady of the Lake in Eric Idle and John Du Prez's musical "Spamalot". Based on the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", the musical opened on Broadway in 2005 to widespread acclaim. Ramírez was singled out for their performance, winning several awards including the 2005 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance. Ben Brantley of "The New York Times" described them as "a toothsome devourer of scenery", and another reviewer for The Playgoer emphasizing their stage presence remarked that their "intensity is totally serious and totally ludicrous and totally on key". An "Entertainment Weekly" review gave them the highest praise by calling them a show-stealer.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: After success on Broadway, Ramírez joined the cast of the ABC medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" in a recurring role as Dr. Calliope 'Callie' Torres, a love interest for Dr. George O'Malley, in the show's second season. On a special "Grey's Anatomy"-themed episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show", Ramírez revealed that top executives from ABC, who were greatly impressed by their performance in "Spamalot", offered them a role in any ABC show they wanted. Ramírez picked "Grey's", as they were already a fan of the show. Ramírez further explained that at their initial audition, the producers liked them and intended to add them to the show but did not know who to cast them as. Ramírez also said they were in awe of how the executives said, "Pick a show, any show," explaining that it is rare. The series creator and executive producer, Shonda Rhimes explained, "I was looking for a girlfriend for George, but it was in the infancy stages, so I had no idea what I was looking for." Rhimes built the character around Ramírez after Rhimes met them. Ramírez, who was initially given a recurring status at the time of the character's inception, received a star billing in the show's third season, alongside fellow cast member Eric Dane, who portrayed Dr. Mark Sloan.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez provided "a cappella" vocals in the song "Silent Night" for the soundtrack of the show's sixth-season episode "Holidaze," airing on November 19, 2009. Ramirez served as the main vocalist for the musical episode of "Grey's Anatomy", "Song Beneath the Song", which aired on March 31, 2011. Marcus James Dixon of Gold Derby called them the "show-stopper" and wrote that they "stole the show in a gut-wrenching performance worthy of an Emmy award."


title: Sara Ramirez

text: As the series progressed, the character's popularity soared and Ramírez garnered widespread recognition and critical acclaim for their portrayal of a complex character on television. Maggie Fremont, a TV critic for "Vulture", reviewed Ramírez and Jessica Capshaw's performances during an 11th season episode, calling them "goddesses walking amongst mere mortals". Ramírez was nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Television Series at the Alma Awards in 2007 and 2008. Also in 2007, at the 13th Screen Actors Guild Awards, the cast of Grey's Anatomy received the Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. They and the cast were nominated for the same award in 2008. In 2011, at the 42nd NAACP Image Awards, Ramírez was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.""


title: Sara Ramirez

text: In May 2016, Ramírez left the show at the conclusion of the 12th season, after having played the character for a decade. They released a statement saying, "I'm deeply grateful to have spent the last 10 years with my family at "Grey's Anatomy" and ABC, but for now I'm taking some welcome time off." Rhimes wrote of Ramírez's work on the show, "Dr. Callie Torres came into our lives dancing it out in her underwear almost a decade ago, and I could not be happier or more proud of her journey. Sara Ramírez's performance inspired me as well as millions of fans each week."


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez turned producer with the 2016 teen comedy film, "Loserville". The project was released in partnership with the Pacer Foundation's Center for Bullying Prevention & Stomp Out Bullying.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: From 2017 to 2019, Ramírez co-starred in the fourth and fifth seasons of the CBS political drama "Madam Secretary", replacing Bebe Neuwirth, who played Nadine Tolliver. They played Kat Sandoval, the new policy advisor of Secretary Elizabeth McCord (Téa Leoni).


title: Sara Ramirez

text: In 2021, Ramírez was cast as non-binary podcast host and comedian Che Díaz in the "Sex and the City" revival series "And Just Like That...". The character of Che has received mixed to negative reviews.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: On June 27, 2011, Ramírez got engaged to longtime boyfriend Ryan DeBolt, a business analyst at TIMEC in Paris, France. They were married on July 4, 2012, in a private beachside ceremony in New York. On July 6, 2021, Ramirez announced in an Instagram post that they had separated from DeBolt.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: In September 2016, Ramírez donated their hair to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for children who suffer from medical conditions that lead to hair loss. Afterward, they sported a buzz cut, styled as an undercut.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: In October 2016, Ramírez described themself as queer and bisexual at the True Colors Fund's 40 To None Summit (now known as the Impact Summit) in Los Angeles, California. In an email to "the Huffington Post", they wrote that their decision to come out publicly was a "very organic and natural" one. In August 2020, Ramirez said they had recently determined they identify as nonbinary and used she/they pronouns, which were changed to they/them sometime in 2021.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez released their first single, a rendition of Silent Night, in 2009. The song was featured in the tenth episode of the sixth season of "Grey's Anatomy." Their debut, self-titled, extended play came out in March 2011 on the iTunes Store under the label of Atrevida Records. The EP included four songs, including a cover of "The Story", which was originally recorded by Brandi Carlile in her "2007 album". Two of the three songs were co-written by Ramirez and the album's writer-producer Rob Giles. "Sara Ramirez" debuted at number 37 on the "Billboard" 200, number nine on "Billboard" Independent Albums chart, and number 38 on the Canadian Albums Chart. "The Story" debuted the same week at number 69 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, number 72 on the Canadian Hot 100, and number 34 on the Irish Singles Chart. Soundtracks for "Monty Python's Spamalot (Original Broadway Cast Recording)" (2005) and "" (2011) were released under the labels of Decca Records and ABC Studios respectively.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez is an activist and extensively campaigns for LGBT rights. They are a member of the True Colors United board of directors and The Task Force, and the San Diego, New York, and San Francisco LGBT Centers. They spoke in support of homeless LGBTQ youth at a True Colors Fund conference. In addition, Ramirez supports other groups including BiNetUSA, Bisexual Organizing Project, American Institute of Bisexuality, NDLON, and Mujeres De Maíz. In 2015, they were awarded the Ally for Equality Award by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.


title: Sara Ramirez

text: Ramírez won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical and the Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for their role in the 2005 Broadway musical "Spamalot". They gained widespread acclaim for their portrayal of Dr. Callie Torres in ABC's medical drama "Grey's Anatomy". They garnered nominations for the Best Actress at the NAACP Image Award, the ALMA Award, and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Timothy Richard Tebow (; born August 14, 1987) is an American football player who is a free agent. He previously played three seasons in the National Football League (NFL) as a quarterback, most notably with the Denver Broncos. Tebow played college football at Florida, where he became the first underclassman to win the Heisman Trophy and led his team to two BCS National Championship victories in 2007 and 2009. At the conclusion of his collegiate career, he held the Southeastern Conference's records for career passing efficiency and rushing touchdowns.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Selected by the Broncos in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft, Tebow became their starter during the 2011 season. His tenure revitalized a struggling team, leading them to their first division title and playoff victory since 2005. Questions over Tebow's future potential, however, resulted in him being traded the following offseason to the New York Jets, where he spent one year as a backup. After failing to make the final roster of the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, Tebow pursued a minor league baseball career with the New York Mets organization from 2016 to 2021. The same year he retired from baseball, Tebow returned to the NFL as a tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars, but was released after one preseason game.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Known for his outspoken Christian faith, Tebow became a cultural phenomenon with the 2011 Broncos. His propensity for kneeling on football fields led to his form of prayer receiving the neologism "Tebowing".


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow was born in the Philippines to American parents. In the late 1960s, Tebow's parents – Pamela Elaine (née Pemberton) and Robert Ramsey Tebow II – met while attending the University of Florida. During that time, his mother was a freshman and his father was a sophomore. The couple married on June 12, 1971, before Pamela's graduation from the university. In 1985, the family moved to the Philippines where they served as Baptist missionaries and built a ministry. During the Tebows' stay, Pamela contracted amoebic dysentery and fell into a coma. While recovering, she discovered that she was pregnant. The medications used to treat Pamela caused a severe placental abruption. Doctors expected a stillbirth and recommended an abortion, which was illegal in the Philippines even in severe cases; the Tebows decided against it. On August 14, 1987, Pamela Tebow gave birth to Tim Tebow in Manila. When Tim was three years old, his family moved from the Philippines to Jacksonville, Florida.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow is the youngest of five children. He is of Belgian (Walloon) origin. His ancestor Andries Tebow sailed to America from Bruges in the 1680s. He and his siblings were all homeschooled by their parents, who instilled the family's Christian beliefs. Tebow is dyslexic and believes in his uniqueness as a gift from God. He began his high school football career as a tight end for Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville. Before the 2003 season, he moved to nearby St. Johns County, making him eligible to play for the struggling football program at Allen D. Nease High School where he could play quarterback. He never actually enrolled at either school, however: his parents chose to home-school him. Florida law allows homeschooled students to participate on the team of the local high school in the school district in which they live, and private schools such as Trinity Christian Academy are also allowed to let homeschooled students play on their teams.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow came to national prominence as a junior at Nease, known for his running and throwing abilities, as well as an intense competitiveness. Later that year, he suffered an injury to his right leg late in the first half of a game. Originally believed to be suffering from a bad cramp, he actually played the entire second half with a broken fibula, at one point rushing for a 29-yard touchdown. After the game the extent of the injury was discovered and he was held out for the remainder of his junior season. Nevertheless, he was named Florida's Player of the Year and became a major college football quarterback prospect.


title: Tim Tebow

text: During his senior season, he led the Nease Panthers to a state title, earned All-State honors, was named Florida's Mr. Football and a "Parade" magazine high school All-American, and repeated as Florida's Player of the Year. He played in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas which featured the top 78 senior high school football players in the nation and was shown nationally on NBC television.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow was the subject of an ESPN "Faces in Sports" documentary. The segment was titled "Tim Tebow: The Chosen One", and focused on Tebow's home school controversy and missionary work in the Philippines, his athletic exploits, and the college recruiting process. Tebow was also featured in "Sports Illustrated" on the "Faces in the Crowd" page. In 2007, he was named to the Florida State Athletic Association's All-Century Team that listed the Top 33 football players in the state of Florida's 100-year history of high school football. Despite family ties to the University of Florida, where his parents met as students, Tebow considered other schools, including the University of Alabama.


title: Tim Tebow

text: On January 7, 2007, Tebow was featured prominently in an ESPN "Outside The Lines" feature on home-schooled athletes seeking equal access to high school athletics in other states. Because a home-schooler's access to public and private school athletic functions varies by state, Tebow and former defensive end Jason Taylor (who was allowed to play at his local high school in Pennsylvania) argued in favor of extending the right to play for local teams to more states. Upon becoming the first home-schooled athlete to be nominated for the Heisman Trophy, he remarked, "That's really cool. A lot of times people have this stereotype of home-schoolers as not very athletic – it's like, go win a spelling bee or something like that – it's an honor for me to be the first one to do that." Tebow received the 2008 Quaqua Protégé Award as outstanding home-education graduate.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida and play for coach Urban Meyer's Florida Gators football team from 2006 to 2009. While he spent his freshman year as a backup, eventual career highlights at Florida include winning the Heisman Trophy in 2007, leading the team to a BCS championship in 2008, and a 13–1 season in 2009. The Gators' coaches selected him as a team captain in 2008 and 2009, and he is the only three-time recipient of the Gators' most valuable player award, having been chosen by his teammates in 2007, 2008, and 2009.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Despite a strong showing in his first inter-squad scrimmage, head coach Urban Meyer named Tebow second-string behind Chris Leak. A backup throughout the season, Tebow was a significant contributor to the Gators' 2006 success. He made his college debut coming off the bench in a goal line situation against Southern Miss. He rushed for a touchdown on a designed quarterback scramble on his first play. In his next game, he led the team in rushing yards against UCF.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Although questions about his passing skill loomed, Tebow was named the Florida Gators starting quarterback for the 2007 season. He opened the year 13-of-17 for 300 yards and three touchdowns in his starting debut against Western Kentucky University. Tebow finished the regular season with the second highest passing efficiency in the nation with 177.8. Additionally, he averaged 4.3 yards per carry on the ground.


title: Tim Tebow

text: On November 24, against the Florida State Seminoles, Tebow threw for three touchdowns and rushed for two in a 45–12 rout of the Seminoles. It was later revealed that Tebow fractured his right hand during the third quarter but played the rest of the game. He had to wear a cast for the next three weeks.


title: Tim Tebow

text: After the 2007 season, Tebow was recognized as a first-team All-SEC selection and a consensus first-team All-American. He won the Heisman Trophy, given to the most outstanding college football player of the year. Tebow also received the Davey O'Brien Award, annually given to the best quarterback in the nation, on February 18 in Fort Worth, Texas.


title: Tim Tebow

text: On December 8, 2007, Tebow was awarded the Heisman Trophy, finishing ahead of Arkansas's Darren McFadden, Hawaii's Colt Brennan, and Missouri's Chase Daniel. He was the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. He garnered 462 first-place votes and 1,957 points, 254 points ahead of the runner-up, Arkansas running back Darren McFadden. He finished the regular season as the only player in FBS history to rush and pass for at least 20 touchdowns in both categories in the same season. He had 32 passing touchdowns, 23 rushing touchdowns, and became the third Florida player to win the Heisman Trophy, joining Steve Spurrier and Danny Wuerffel.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Before the 2007 season had even come to a close, Florida coach Urban Meyer stated that he would likely use two quarterbacks during the 2008 season to take some of the workload off of Tebow's shoulders. Tebow led the Gators in rushing in 2007 but also had to play through a bruised shoulder and broken non-throwing hand. Before the 2008 season even started, Tebow had his name pulled from consideration for the Playboy Preseason All-American team because it conflicted with his Christian beliefs.


title: Tim Tebow

text: On November 1, 2008, playing against the Georgia Bulldogs, Tebow ran for his 37th rushing touchdown, breaking the school record previously held by former Florida running back Emmitt Smith. Tebow helped lead the Gators to a 12–1 record in 2008. After clinching the SEC East title, the team played for and won the SEC title in the 2008 SEC Championship Game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. The win secured the #2 ranking in the final BCS standings, which earned the Gators the chance to play the #1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, which they won 24–14.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow finished third in the 2008 Heisman Trophy voting, with Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford taking the top spot followed by Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, despite Tebow receiving the most first-place votes. He won the Maxwell Award in 2008, only the second player to ever win the award twice.


title: Tim Tebow

text: On January 11, 2009, at a national championship celebration held at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, Tebow announced that he would not make himself eligible for the 2009 NFL Draft, but would instead return for his senior season at Florida. A day later, he had surgery on his right shoulder to remove a bone spur in an effort to reduce chronic inflammation.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow opened the 2009 season continuing a streak of throwing and running for a touchdown in blowout wins over Charleston Southern and Troy. He ran for a touchdown in the third game, a win against Tennessee, but failed to throw for a touchdown for the first time since his freshman season. In answer to an interview question, Tebow stated he was a virgin. The statement was subject to much discussion about whether the question was necessary, including criticism of the reporter who originally asked.


title: Tim Tebow

text: Tebow started against Kentucky despite suffering from a respiratory illness and taking two bags of intravenous fluids before the game. He ran for two touchdowns to put him in 2nd place on the all-time SEC touchdown list and he also threw for a touchdown. Late in the third quarter, he was hit in the chest by Kentucky defensive end Taylor Wyndham, fell backwards, and hit the back of his head on the knee of Florida tackle Marcus Gilbert. He lay motionless for several minutes before being helped to the sidelines, where he appeared to vomit. He was taken by ambulance to the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center. A CT scan showed no bleeding in the brain, with the injury described as a mild concussion. Coach Urban Meyer stayed the night in the hospital with Tebow, who was discharged in the morning. Coincidentally, Florida did not have a game scheduled for the following Saturday, and Tebow was cleared to play in the Gators' next contest at LSU on October 10, two weeks after the incident.