As Lockerbie bombing anniversary remembered, families ‘horrified’ at US announcement
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The US Justice Department later on today is expected to unseal charges in connection with the Lockerbie bombing on the 32nd anniversary of the tragedy.
The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on December 21, 1988, killed 270 people in Britain’s largest terrorist atrocity.
Now, outgoing attorney general William Barr is scheduled to hold a public announcement on Monday and has invited the victims’ families to watch the briefing live via an online stream.
However, some of the families have said they are “horrified at the intrusion on their grief, on a day that they wish to remember their loved ones”.
The move was also described as “grandstanding” as Barr, who is set to leave his position next week, held the same job when the Justice Department revealed criminal charges nearly 30 years ago against intelligence officials.
One man — former Libyan intelligence official Abdelbaset al-Megrahi — was convicted of mass murder, and a second Libyan suspect was acquitted of all charges.
Al-Megrahi was given a life sentence, however Scottish authorities released him on humanitarian grounds in 2009 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later died in Tripoli.
A panel of five appeal judges is currently deliberating on whether to acquit the late al-Megrahi over the bombing following the conclusion of the third appeal against his conviction.
File Photo: A file photograph shows a memorial stone in the Lockerbie memorial garden in the town’s Dryfesdale Cemetery, in Lockerbie, Scotland. EPA/BRIAN STEWART
