FEATURE-Lockerbie victims differ in attitude to crash
15/12/1998
LONDON (Reuters) - Jim Swire, who has spent a decade seeking justice in his daughter's murder, has little to show for it except a suspicion that the official version of who committed the 1988 Lockerbie bombing is wrong or incomplete.
Swire's critics say he has been duped by Libya, the country harboring the two suspects charged by the United States and Britain in the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.
In the crusade to find the truth about who blew up the plane carrying his 24-year-old daughter Flora, Swire has traveled the world, losing his medical practice and sacrificing $800,000 of income in the process.
Now he is more optimistic than ever before. He thinks Libya within weeks will hand over the two intelligence agents charged in the bombing for trial in the Netherlands, under a plan agreed to by the United States and Britain.
Swire hopes the trial will uncover evidence that leads to the real Lockerbie culprits. "Blaming the entire thing on Libya is suspicious, " he told Reuters in an interview.
"These Libyans, if they were found guilty, would likely be small minnows in a large pond. In a murder mystery, motive is vital," he said. "Libya had a motive (for downing the airplane), but Iran's motive was fresher and stronger."
Libya's motive for the attack would have been revenge for the U.S. bombing of Tripoli in 1986, Swire said. But six months before Lockerbie Iran swore revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by a U.S. Navy warship.

AMERICANS SEEK JUSTICE AND RETALIATION
In the United States, many of the Pan Am victims' relatives parted company with Swire years ago when he visited Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and started talking about conspiracy theories. Many also oppose the deal under which the Libyan suspects would be tried in The Hague under Scottish law.
Ten years after losing their loved ones, some Americans ask why so little has been done for justice or even retaliation. They say the deal worked out by the U.S. and British governments plays into Gaddafi's hands and lets him off the hook by allowing him to create interminable delays.
"It pains me tremendously to know that justice has not been served in our case. A lot of bitterness and anger against the (U.S.) administration sets in," said Suse Lowenstein, whose son Alexander, 21, died in the bombing.
"Of all the things we have done in 10 years, sending troops and missiles where not a single American life was taken or in danger, what about us?" she asked. "189 Americans were murdered in the skies. I find that utterly unacceptable.
Swire says he is horrified by suggestions of retaliation. "We want to see justice, not cruise missiles," he said. "It's all a very strange story," he said of the investigation of Lockerbie. "We're not saying the official version is untrue but that there are serious difficulties with it and the best way to resolve them is a trial."
Among these difficulties, he said, were reports that a former Iranian intelligence agent, Abolghasem Mesbahi, told German investigators in 1997 that Lockerbie was an Iranian job. Mesbahi said the bomb was brought into Britain on an Iranian aircraft and placed in the Pan Am jet as they stood next to each other at London's Heathrow airport.

FBI INVESTIGATOR REMOVED FOR FABRICATING EVIDENCE
Swire also wonders about the FBI investigator who said in 1991 that he had pinned the crime on the Libyans -- and was later removed from his post after an investigation found his department had fabricated evidence in other big cases.
Until 1991, Swire said, the assumption was that Lockerbie was an Iranian plot and Syria played a part in it. Then came the Lockerbie indictments in November 1991 naming Libya as the sole perpetrator.
Swire wonders about the sudden change and its possible relationship to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Syria was a U.S. ally and Iran was neutral. He also notes that within weeks of the indictments the last of the American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-backed militants was released.
"The question is, was there a deal done between the United States and Iran?" said Swire, who met British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week and urged him to follow up any leads produced by the hoped-for Lockerbie trial.
Swire gave up his partnership in a medical practice in Bromsgrove, central England, because he could not give enough time to it. He now works part-time and he said he may have to sell his home and find somewhere cheaper to live.
He has a painting of his daughter Flora in his bedroom, and in the United States Lowenstein also has a daily reminder of the tragedy -- 50 sculptures of the victims' mothers on the lawn of her Long Island home. She has 50 more to complete.
Each mother came to her studio, talked and then recreated her reaction when she learned of her child's death while Lowenstein quietly took photographs. The sculptures are lifelike, one and a half times larger than life, made of synthetic stone over welded steel.
"They portray each woman at the moment she heard the news. You can hear them scream or weep or be very quiet or bang the floor. Our bodies don't forget," she said. "Their story is my story. It is something I live with every day."
As for next week, "It's just an anniversary and another day. It' s been an entire decade that I have missed Alex every single day. The tenth anniversary in that sense is no different than any day in the last decade," Lowenstein said.
"We've been jerked around so much that I personally am not going to get my hopes up once more," she said of the latest talk of an imminent trial, adding: "I find it curious that this should happen right in front of the tenth anniversary. If they can do it now, why not sooner?"
Another American, Stephanie Bernstein, who lost her husband Michael in the tragedy, is slightly more optimistic.
"It's ironic that 10 years after the fact we are still pursuing the people who perpetrated the bombing," she said. But she knows from her late husband's work as a Justice Department lawyer tracking down former Nazis that "justice, if it ever comes, takes time."
On the door to his office, she said, Michael Bernstein had taped a paper from a fortune cookie that said something like "The law sleeps but it never dies."

Susan Cornwell, FEATURE-Lockerbie victims differ in attitude to crash., Reuters, 12-15-1998.