Judges yesterday sentenced a Libyan found guilty of the Lockerbie airliner bombing to life imprisonment and recommended he serve a minimum of 20 years.
Forty-nine-year-old Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, identified as a Libyan intelligence agent, will serve his mandatory life sentence at a jail in Scotland.
His fellow accused, Libyan Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, was earlier acquitted of murdering the 270 victims of the 1988 blast.
Presiding judge Lord Sutherland said the sentence was "substantially less than it would otherwise have been" because of Megrahi's age and the fact he would be serving his sentence in a foreign country.
Relatives of bereaved victims in the courtroom greeted the sentence with sighs of disappointment.
Jim Swire, who lost his student daughter in the suitcase bombing of the Pan Am jumbo jet, collapsed after the verdict was issued by presiding judge Lord Sutherland.
Relatives of the victims, including many who had flown in at short notice from the US, gasped then broke into sobs, holding each other. They had waited 10 years to see the Libyans handed over for trial, and two more years for a verdict.
A spokesman for American families said the conviction of Megrahi, said to be a member of the Libyan intelligence service, pointed directly to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi as the author of one of the worst terrorist outrages of modern times.
Megrahi's lawyer said his client maintained his innocence. State-run Libyan television reported that he would launch an appeal, and Libya's UN envoy told CNN that Libya "had nothing to do with this tragedy at all."
In a unanimous verdict, three Scottish judges found Megrahi, 49, guilty of planting the bomb aboard a flight in Malta which connected via Frankfurt with Pan Am's London-to-New York flight.
The judges were also unanimous in acquitting co-accused Libyan Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima of causing the explosion, which destroyed the Boeing 747 at cruising altitude over Lockerbie.
It killed all 259 aboard and 11 people in the town.
"In view of the verdict of the court, you are now discharged and free to go," Lord Sutherland told Fahima, who immediately left the courtroom.
"This is not a fair verdict," said Arab diplomatic observer Ragda Mahmoud Neana. "We live in a world dominated by the injustices of the big powers," she said through an interpreter.
They did not look at each other. Megrahi slumped deeper in his chair as Sutherland pronounced the word "guilty." Fahima wiped his face with his hand when his "not guilty" verdict came.
Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush said he hoped the families of Pan Am 103 victims took some solace from the guilty verdict against a Libyan intelligence agent and said the United States would keep pressuring Libya to take responsibility and compensate them.
"I appreciate very much the Scottish court ... decision to convict a member of the Libyan intelligence Service," Bush told reporters. "I hope the families will find some solace that a guilty verdict was rendered."
"I want to assure the families and victims the United States government continues to press Libya to accept responsibility for this act and to compensate the families," he added.
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