Two Libyans down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The crash claims the lives of 259 onboard and 11 on the ground. On Jan. 31, 2001, after a nine-month trial, Abdelbasset Megrahi, one of two defendants charged with blowing up the aircraft, is found guilty of murder by a special Scottish court in the Netherlands. His co-defendant, Lameen Fhima, the ex-station manager of Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, is acquitted.
November 1990
The Bush administration deploys U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to force Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and deflect Saddam Hussein’s threats against the United States.
February 1993
Terrorists bomb the World Trade Center in New York, leaving six dead and hundreds injured. However, evidence presented at the trial of bombing co-conspirator Ramzi Yousef details a plot to blow up one tower, causing it to topple the other, and to blow up 11 U.S. commercial aircraft and kill thousands in one day.
June 1996
A truck bomb rips through a U.S. military complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. service personnel and wounding hundreds more. It is the deadliest bombing involving U.S. citizens in the Middle East since the 1983 Beirut attack that killed 241 Americans.
August 1998
Terrorists bomb two American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 257 people. On May 30, 2001, four men are convicted of conspiring with the Osama bin Laden network to carry out the bombings.
October 2000
The bombing of USS Cole off the coast of Yemen leaves 17 U.S. service personnel dead.
September 2001
Terrorist ram U.S. airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth plane crashes into a Pennsylvania field. More than 6,000 are presumed dead. Saudi exile bin Laden is the prime suspect, as well as many others in his Al Qaida network.
–Chicago JUF News