Trial Uncertainty Haunts Relatives
The victims of Pan Am Flight 103 had their lives ended with tragic abruptness by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, more than 12 years ago.
The trial of the two Libyans accused of the bombing has now dragged on for eight months, but may finally coming to an end. Defense lawyers are in the final stages of their closing arguments in the case being tried in Camp Zeist, Holland, under Scottish law. The three-judge panel is likely due to begin its deliberations this week.
No one has been watching proceedings more closely than the relatives of the victims. Peter Lowenstein's then 21-year-old son Alexander died in the bombing, which killed all 259 people aboard - mostly Americans and Britons - and 11 on the ground.
"It's very clear to me that the right two guys are on trial," said Lowenstein, who has been following the trial in person and on a closed circuit television feed in New York.
But it's not very clear whether the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the two accused Libyan agents, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, actually did place the bomb aboard a plane in Malta.
Prosecutors tried to show during the trial that a suitcase containing the bomb was later transferred to a Pan Am flight in Frankfurt en route to New York and later exploded over Scotland.
But the prosecution has produced no eye-witness to the planting of the bomb - no smoking gun. and the defense has tried to shift the blame away from the Libyans and toward a Palestinian bomb-making cell known to be operating in Germany at the time.
The decision - despite the certainty of some observers and family members of victims - could go either way, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips.
"If they're found not guilty it will be devastating because I know they did it," Lowenstein said.
There are three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty and - a quirk under Scottish law called - not proven. Whatever the verdict, for Lowenstein the trial doesn't end the tragedy.
"It can't be the end. If you're lucky you learn to live with it," he said
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