We would pay back cash to get our relatives back

9:40pm Friday 29th August 2008

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A FORMER county GP, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie air disaster, has dismissed accusations by the son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi that the Lockerbie relatives were “very greedy”.

Dr Jim Swire, formerly of Bromsgrove and whose 23-year-old daughter Flora was killed when Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland on December 21, 1988, said the compensation received by relatives could never make up for the loss and many he knew would gladly repay the money if they could have their loved ones back.

Dr Swire, who campaigned tirelessly for the truth and justice after the bombing and became the spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 Group, was responding to comments made by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi during BBC 2’s The Conspiracy Files.

Mr al-Gaddafi said the families were asking for more and more money.

“I think they were very greedy and I think they were trading with the blood of their sons and daughters,” he said.

He said the Libyan government had only taken responsibility for Britain’s worst terrorist attack, when 270 people died, to get international sanctions lifted.

But Dr Swire, who wrote a book called For Flora about the Lockerbie bombing, said: “I just wish the needs of the relatives – namely a thirst for the truth – would be attended to rather than an alleged hunger for money.

“So far as many relatives I know would say, we would gladly repay any ‘compensation’ money if we could just have our loved ones back.

“Money cannot buy our families back.”

Dr Swire, who now lives in Glasgow, has also said Libya’s admission of guilt for the bombing had allowed its economy to recover while giving the West access to the country’s oil industry.

l Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was found guilty on January 31, 2001, by three Scottish judges in the High Court of Justiciary sitting in the Netherlands, of murdering 259 people on board the flight and 11 people on the ground.

A co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, also a Libyan, was found not guilty.