Parents hope for lockerbie justice - North family backs Dutch trial move
From THE JOURNAL
25/08/1998
Date
: Tue, 25 August, 1998 Publication : THE JOURNAL Section : National News
Edition : 1 Page : 1 Headline : Parents hope for lockerbie justice - North
family backs Dutch trial move ByLine :
By Colette McBeth and Philippa Jones
Text :
A NORTH couple whose 29-year-old son died in the Lockerbie air disaster spoke last night of their hope of seeing justice done at last.
Nearly 10 years after the blast that killed 270 people, Britain and the United States challenged Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi to hand over the Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial in a neutral country, The Netherlands.
They offered a major incentive for the Libyans to bring the near 10-year saga to a resolution - backing for a lifting of United Nations sanctions - but threatened the opposite if the offer was spurned.
And Jean and Barrie Berkley of Sandhoe, near Corbridge, Northumberland,said although a trial couldn't bring back their law lecturer son, Alistair, it could help prevent disasters in the future.
Mrs Berkley, 67, a retired marriage guidance counsellor, and a leading member of a British support group for the victims' families, said yesterday: "Today is a happy day for all of us. Ten years is a long time and we have all felt very frustrated.
"It seemed as though no-one thought it important enough to find a way around the difficulties.
"A number of our members have died from stress-related illnesses, never having any answers to their questions about why their family were killed in that way.
"At the end of the day it's not going to make any of us who have lost our children and our mothers and fathers feel better, but it may discourage this sort of behaviour in the future." Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insisted that their plan, which would see the two suspects tried by a Scottish court sitting in The Hague, was a "take it or leave it" formula.
Under the plan unveiled simultaneously at news conferences in London and Washington the two men - suspected intelligence officers Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah - would be tried by a panel of three Scottish High Court judges according to Scots law.
Mr Cook said: "For years, Libya has promised that it would accept a court without jury, meeting in a third country. That way forward is now open to them.
"It is a way forward that holds out the prospect of lifting the hardship of sanctions on the people of Libya and ending the long wait for justice of the relatives of those who were murdered."
Alistair, who taught at the then Polytechnic of Central London, was on his way to spend Christmas with his parents in New York when Pan-Am Flight 103 was destroyed.
After 10 long years of campaigning the Berkleys, who both retired to the North-East seven years ago, have learned to treat news of alleged breakthroughs with scepticism.
But although they say Libya's reaction is a "wait and see" situation, they are optimistic about the offer.
Mrs Berkley said: "They do not want the sanctions and Robin Cook has said they will lift them if it goes ahead, so it does sound hopeful.
"It will be fascinating really to hear the evidence come out because there have been so many stories about what went on.
"Having heard these stories of incompetence and murky dealings I would like to see them looked at. I would like to feel that if people have been incompetent and dishonest it will be shown up.
"If at the end of the trial we don't feel they have been dealt with then we have a right to ask for an inquiry."
Mr Cook said that if the two suspects were surrendered, Britain would immediately support action in the UN Security Council to suspend sanctions against Libya.
Conversely, he suggested: "If Libya should refuse to surrender the two suspects, international support for the sanctions will be redoubled."
Later, a senior US official warned that his government would press for international oil sanctions on Libya if it failed to hand over the suspects under the new plan.
The Libyans have previously signalled that they would accept a trial in a neutral country before an international panel of judges, rather than an all-Scottish panel.
But Alistair Duff, the Scottish lawyer for the two suspects, while expressing disappointment at the proposal for an all-Scottish judges panel and saying that his clients would need a number of guarantees about their safety, added that the issue of the make-up of the judges' panel was not insurmountable.
"The possibility of... a trial before a panel of Scottish judges rather than an international panel of judges is not one that necessarily renders this package unacceptable," said Mr Duff.
Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for the campaigning group UK Families of Flight 103, said he was "full of optimism" that a trial would now take place.
"We believe that the gap between the (Libyan) offer and the position now being taken by Britain and America is so small, that it's something we shouldn't push our noses into, but rather we should just let the diplomats and lawyers get on with sorting out the details," he said.