OWN CORRESPONDENT, Tripoli | Thursday
LIBYA has rejected calls by the US and Britain to admit responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, after Scottish judges in the Netherlands convicted a Libyan security official of murder and sentenced him to life in a Scottish prison for the bombing.
“Libya, as a state, has no responsibility in this affair, which is a judicial affair,” foreign ministry representative Hassuna al-Shawsh told a press conference in Tripoli.
Victims’ relatives said the verdict bolstered their claims that Libyan Colonel Moammar Gadhafi and his government are responsible for the bombing. The conviction could also give impetus to civil actions that the relatives have filed against Libya. The British government has demanded that Libya pay $700m compensation to relatives.
The three-judge court, wrapping up an 84-day trial, found Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 48, guilty of the mass killing and said the evidence “does not create a reasonable doubt in our minds about the Libyan origin of this crime.”
The court found a second Libyan suspect, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, not guilty and ordered him freed.
Tears and jubilation from victims’ relatives greeted the guilty verdict read out by the presiding judge, Lord Ranald Sutherland.
The three-judge court said al-Megrahi would be eligible for parole after 20 years, partly because of his age and partly because the term would be served in a foreign country. The court said it accepted “the evidence that (al-Megrahi) was a member of the JSO, occupying posts of fairly high rank.” The JSO is the Libyan intelligence service.
The White House said UN and US sanctions on Libya would remain in place, and US and British officials said they will keep investigating the bombing.
Prosecutors said the two men smuggled a bomb-laden suitcase onto a flight from the Mediterranean island of Malta, tagging it for transfer in Frankfurt, Germany, and then to the doomed jetliner in London. When a small plastic explosive implanted in a cassette recorder detonated at 9 300m the aircraft was ripped apart, sending 259 passengers and crew to their deaths. Eleven were killed on the ground by falling chunks of flaming wreckage. – AFP
ZA*NOW
Lockerbie trial opens with not guilty plea May 3, 2000
Background:
Lockerbie suspects in court, 11 years on December 8 1999
What if the ‘Lockerbie bombers’ are innocent? April 1999
How the Lockerbie deal was done April 6, 1999
New hope that Mandela has brokered a Lockerbie deal March 1999
Gaddafi takes Mandela’s advice to settle Lockerbie August 1998
British ‘tried to murder Gaddafi’
OAU wants pressure off Libya June 1998
State’s lawyer backed Mandela over Lockerbie October 1997