Lockerbie: Relatives get $2.7bn

2003-04-29 14:14

Tripoli - Libya will pay $10m to relatives of each of the 270 victims of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing after accepting civil responsibility for the blast, foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham asid on Tuesday.

"My country has accepted civil responsibility for the actions of its officials in the Lockerbie affair, in conformity with international civil law and the agreement reached in London in March by Libyan, American and British officials," he said.

Raghman said full payment was conditional on UN sanctions against Libya being lifted after payment of an initial installment of four million dollars to each victim, and US sanctions after a similar payment.

After payment of the final installment of $2m Libya would ask to be removed from the US list of countries supporting terrorism, he added.

The total sum of $2.7bn was the same as US officials said on March 12 Libya had offered as compensation in talks with the United States and Britain.

They also said Tripoli was prepared to assume limited responsibility for the downing of Pan Am flight 103, something it has previously refused to do.

The Boeing 747 blew up and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, after taking off from London, killing all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground.

In January 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of two Libyan agents charged with the bombing, and sentenced him to life in prison. His appeal was rejected in March last year.

- AFX