Word: libya
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...killed 270; in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands. After a nine-month trial, three Scottish judges delivered a split verdict, sentencing Megrahi to life imprisonment for bombing the U.S. airliner while acquitting co-defendant Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 44. The verdicts ended a decade-long struggle between the West and Libya, though Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was tried as an individual...
...Rwanda. But those special international courts can range more broadly than the Scottish one, which despite the oddity of being in the Netherlands had the fundamental task of judging a mass murder that occurred in Lockerbie. The court thus explicitly accepted testimony that al-Megrahi was a member of Libya's intelligence service but left it to others to draw further conclusions. Bert Ammerman, a New Jersey resident whose brother Tom was on the Pan Am flight, was quick to do so. "Al-Megrahi's conviction leads straight to the doorsteps of Gaddafi," he said after viewing the verdict...
...flight, heard the verdict, he fainted in the court gallery. But the ruling also underlined another challenge: to start from this now legally established link and go up the chain to the real instigators. President George W. Bush said "the United States government will continue to pressure Libya to accept responsibility for this act and to compensate the families." British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook insisted that Libya is required to do both under the terms of a U.N. Security Council resolution...
...sure, the Libyan leader has been known to temper his bluster with conciliation, particularly in the last few years. Libya has already agreed to pay $33 million in compensation to families of the 171 people killed when a French airliner was shot down over Niger in 1989; six Libyan officers, including Gaddafi's brother-in-law, received life sentences in absentia from a French court in 1999 for that attack. An investigative judge, Jean-Louis Brugui?re, was given the go-ahead late last year to pursue Gaddafi for "complicity in voluntary homicide," complicating France's advocacy...
...Despite the sanctions, life goes on in tranquil Tripoli. There are a few restaurants, but they are extremely modest. The hotel waiter offered me whale for dinner. He meant fish, which is a staple given Libya's 800 mile coastline. Camel meat cooked in red tomato sauce is popular here, accompanied by white rice and potatoes. In a happy coincidence with the leader's chosen color, the Libyans drink green tea. But one of their great inheritances from the Italians is capuccino...