Bombings Scotland

In an unprecedented legal arrangement designed to bring a decade-old national trauma to closure, the Clinton administration has agreed to allow the two Libyans charged with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 to be tried by a Scottish court in The Hague, according to U.S. officials and families of the victims. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is expected to notify the families in a conference call today, according to families who have been told to be available.

The United States tried a new tack in its dispute with Libya over the Lockerbie bombing, saying it was looking at how a Scottish court could sit in the Netherlands to try two Libyan suspects. Libya, under U.N. sanctions for failing to hand over the men accused of blowing up a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988--a total of 270 people were killed in the aircraft and on the ground--offered the same solution years ago but met resistance from Britain and the United States.

Rebuffing the United States and Britain, the World Court ruled Friday that it has the authority to settle a dispute deadlocking a trial of two Libyans suspected of blowing up a jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The ruling did not address the crucial question of where a trial could be held, but it paves the way for the court to eventually make that decision. Libya, the United States and Britain have been fighting over the issue for years.

A dispute pitting Libya against the United States and Britain over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, will be heard by the World Court in The Hague next week. The case centers on an international push for the surrender and prosecution of two Libyan nationals implicated in the bombing, which killed 270 people. The court announced that hearings will begin Monday and continue for eight days.

German officials are looking into information from a former top Iranian spy that the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the December 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, a magazine reported. The weekly Der Spiegel said the tip came from Abolghassem Mesbahi, a co-founder of the Iranian intelligence service who later went into exile.

Relatives of the victims of the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, have begun taking advantage of a change in federal law that allows them to sue Libya for its alleged role in the 1988 terrorist attack that killed 270 people. In Washington, lawyers for M. Victoria Cummock of Coral Gables, Fla., whose husband died in the attack, filed a $1-billion class action lawsuit against Libya, the two alleged bombers, Libyan Arab Airlines and the Libyan External Security Organization.

Seven years ago on Dec. 21, a terrorist bomb blew Pan Am Flight 103 from the sky, killing 259 in the plane and 11 on the ground. Little evidence of the tragedy remains. Visible wreckage of the Boeing 747 was long ago removed, although bits and pieces were scattered over 20 miles and continue to turn up. Just this year workers finished rebuilding the row of houses that the fuselage destroyed. A pile of gravel remained in one yard. But the Scots have not forgotten.

Retired building contractor Frank Klein labored 13 weeks and used 270 sandstone bricks in building a memorial to the victims of Pan American Airways Flight 103. But it was not just another project: His daughter was among the passengers aboard the jet when it plunged to the ground at Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Amid growing demands for the Clinton Administration to try harder to bring the accused terrorists to justice, President Clinton dedicated a memorial Friday to the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan American Airways Flight 103 and pledged to "never, never relax our efforts" until the bombers are caught. The United States is "more determined than ever to stand against terrorism, to fight it, to bring terrorists to answer for their crimes," the President said.

A jury Thursday awarded more than $2 million in damages to the parents of a college student killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 died. The verdict, in U.S. District Court in Uniondale, was the second in a trial since courts decided three years ago that Pan American World Airways was liable for damages on the grounds that its security procedures had failed to prevent a suitcase containing the bomb from being placed on the flight.