On 22 December 1992 Flight 1103 took off from Benina International Airport near Benghazi on a domestic flight to Tripoli International Airport. At an altitude of during the Boeing 727's approach to Tripoli airport, the aircraft collided with an Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 and disintegrated, resulting in the death of all 157 passengers and crew. The two crew members of the MiG-23 ejected before impact and survived.
Investigation and aftermath
The official explanation and air accident investigation report both blamed a collision with a Libyan Air Force MiG-23; the pilot and instructor of the MiG were imprisoned. After the crash, a spokesman for the Libyan Civil Authority stated he had been forbidden from releasing any information about the crash, including which planes had been involved. A mass grave was prepared for the victims outside of Tripoli with poor international relations denying the bodies of international victims being returned to their families. Twenty years later, after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Majid Tayari, the instructor in the MiG-23 aircraft, challenged the official version of events, claiming that Flight 1103 was deliberately destroyed, because he saw its tail falling before his aircraft suffered a strong impact and he was forced to eject from his aircraft along with his trainee. In a statement Majid Tayari claims there was no air collision, but conceded that the planes were too close to one another. Ali Aujali, who served as a Libyan diplomat both under Gaddafi and under the National Transitional Council, claims that Gaddafi ordered that the Boeing 727, whose flight was assigned the number 1103, be shot down exactly four years to the day after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in order to demonstrate the negative effects of international sanctions imposed on Libya. According to Aujali, the dictator originally ordered a bomb with a timer to be in the aircraft, but when this failed to explode, he "ordered the to be knocked out of the sky". The widow of one British victim has claimed Libyan families of victims had asked if she had tested her husband's passports for explosive residue. Numerous theories follow the idea that Gaddafi had a hand in the crash, with claims that Gaddafi exploited the accident and used it as propaganda against sanctions from the Pan AmFlight 103 crash.
Memorials
The first memorial for the crash was held near Tripoli, Libya in 2012. The ceremony was attended by families and friends of the victims, and politicians.
