Lockerbie families offered £7m each

The families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing have been offered £7 million each in compensation from the Libyan government.

The total reported deal for the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 would amount to around £1.8 billion.

But Libya has imposed a number of conditions that have to be met before it will release the money, according to the law firm which represents 118 of the families.

Today, British families of the Lockerbie victims welcomed reports that they are each to receive around £7 million following negotiations between Libya and lawyers representing the families.

The Rev John Mosey, 61, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Helga in the atrocity, said tonight that the money would go some way towards "lightening the burden" of his family's loss.

"Obviously it's just another chapter closed and one can't pretend that one isn't pleased," he said. "One isn't unhappy to have a little more money, but it's not compensation, it's blood money."

The conditions imposed on the deal are that 40 per cent of the money will be released only when the now-suspended UN sanctions against Libya are lifted, another 40 per cent when US commercial sanctions are removed and the remaining 20 per cent when Libya is taken off the US list of states sponsoring terrorism.

The explosion killed 259 mostly American passengers and crew and 11 residents of the Scottish village of Lockerbie. In 2001, one Libyan defendant was convicted and a second was acquitted of the mid-air bombing.

The victims' families filed a lawsuit against the Libyan government in 1996.