A woman whose brother died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, says she and another victim’s relative met in New York City with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, whose country has been blamed for the attack.
Colorado Springs, Colorado, attorney Lisa Gibson said the meeting with Qaddafi at the Libyan Mission to the UN on Wednesday was arranged through a Libyan ambassador.
“He generally said he was sorry for the loss, but we didn’t go into any details about the bombing,” Gibson said of the 10-minute meeting with Qaddafi, who was making his first visit to the US to attend the UN General Assembly.
Gibson’s brother was stationed in the Army in Berlin and was going home for Christmas when the plane blew up, killing 270 people.
Last month, a Scottish magistrate ordered the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi after he was diagnosed with fatal prostate cancer. He was greeted by thousands of cheering Libyans upon his arrival, infuriating the victims’ families.
Gibson said she gave the Libyan leader a pen and a card, in which she told him she had been praying for him.
“He was very friendly and cordial to us,” Gibson said. “Honestly, I think he was touched by us being there.”
Gibson said she’s been to Libya three times, and through her humanitarian organization, Peace and Prosperity Alliance, she’s helped to raise money for Libyan children with AIDS and other humanitarian projects.
The Libyan leader has been trying to restore his country’s standing in the world and transform it from a pariah state to an accepted member of the international community.
The US restored ties with Libya in 2006, after Libya agreed to resolve the Lockerbie case in a deal that included paying compensation to the victims’ families.
Gibson said the other person who attended the meeting had lost his father in the bombing.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS