Many families of Pan Am 103 victims hope justice is finally coming. The trial of two alleged members of the Libyan Intelligence Service is scheduled to start in May, 2000. The defendants, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, are in custody at a former US air base in the Netherlands. The unusual plan to hold the trial in a neutral country was agreed to last year by Scotland, the US, and Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. The trial will be held in Holland but under Scottish law before a panel of three Scottish judges. The defendants insist they're innocent.

The investigation that produced the charges against the Libyans was a joint effort by British and American authorities. Current government officials in the two countries won't discuss Lockerbie; British law forbids public discussion of a pending criminal case, and the US Justice Department says the indictment of the two Libyans speaks for itself. Several former investigators who worked on the case say the evidence against the Libyans is solid.

 

	"Buck" Revell oversaw the FBI's Lockerbie INvestigation during its first 2 1/2 years.

"I believe it is an absolutely airtight case," says former FBI Assistant Director Oliver "Buck" Revell, who oversaw that agency's Lockerbie investigation until 1991. "The panel of judges will clearly see that the evidence is compelling and overwhelming and could only lead to one conclusion."

The conclusion, according to the indictment: that on the morning of December 21, 1988, the two Libyans entered Luqa airport on the Mediterranean island of Malta. They placed a brown Samsonite suitcase, with a bomb hidden inside, on an Air Malta jet bound for Frankfurt. That suitcase was then transferred to Pan Am flights in Frankfurt and London before blowing up over Lockerbie. Libyan leader Qadhafi is not named in the indictment, but former investigators say they believe he personally ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103.

"There's a lot of evidence, as well as intelligence ... which indicates that the regime was involved," says David Shayler, who headed the Libya Desk for Britain's intelligence service, MI5, in the mid-1990s. Qadhafi's motive, according to Shayler: revenge. In April, 1986, two-and-a-half years before the downing of Pan Am 103, US warplanes bombed Libya's two largest cities, Tripoli and Benghazi, to punish Qadhafi for alleged terrorist attacks in Europe. Several dozen Libyans died in the attack, including Qadhafi's 2-year-old adopted daughter.

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