Jane and Jim Swire, parents of bombing victim Flora Swire, at their vacation home at Isle of Skye.

270 dead, and at least that many families devastated by the loss of loved ones. 189 of the victims were Americans - more than died later in the 1994 Oklahoma City bombing.

"You are, you know, permanently changed in some ways," says Paul Hudson, a New York lawyer whose 16-year-old daughter, Melina, died on Pan Am 103. Melina was a high-school exchange student on her way home from Exeter. For her father, as for many other victims of the Pan Am bombing, Lockerbie became an obsession. Paul Hudson now runs the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a non-profit group devoted to improving airline safety and security.

Across the Atlantic, in the English Midlands, parents of another young victim were equally devastated. Flora Swire was a gifted and vivacious 23-year-old medical student flying to New York to visit her American boyfriend when she died on Pan Am 103. "We would like to know before we die the background and the reason and who did this terrible crime," says Flora's mother, Jane Swire.

	One of many monuments to Pan Am 103 victims buried at Tundergarth cemetary, Lockerbie. (larger view)

Mrs. Swire is a soft-spoken woman who gives few interviews, but her husband Jim has waged an 11-year public campaign to keep Lockerbie in the public eye and bring the bombers to justice. Swire recently left his medical practice in order to attend the trial in the Netherlands full-time.

"It's like, for us, any other murder would be," he says. "Somebody has murdered our daughter. Brutally, premeditated murder, a horrible death. Can you imagine being hurled into the sub-zero, dark skies over Lockerbie, with a gale raging ...? Someone should be brought to justice for that."

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