GADDAFI IS DEAD; REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF LOCKERBIE

Unconfirmed reports early this morning indicated that Colonel Gaddafi was dead. It had a pleasant sound to it. Reports said he was either hit by a missile while riding in his convoy or shot in the legs and then the head--execution style.

TV news reports were showing a still photo and a short video of what appeared to be a bloodied Gaddafi in a sheet.

Gaddafi is responsible for many evil acts in this world but the one that stands out to me is the Lockerbie bombing. I like to remind readers of the horrors that day over Scotland and reprint a story that puts the reader on board the 747 just prior to the bomb detonating. This is Gaddafi's handy work, his hobby, his signature. It's a better world now that he's dead.

Lockerbie: the victims:

Cradled in their mother's arms, the two youngest victims of the Lockerbie bombing were probably sleeping peacefully as the catastrophic break-up of Pan Am Flight 103 began in the skies above Lockerbie.

As the excited chatter of passengers travelling home for Christmas died away, tiny Jonathan Thomas and Brittany Williams, both just two months old, would have been unaware of the tragedy befalling them.

The youngsters were among 14 babies and children travelling with their parents on the doomed New York-bound plane just before Christmas in 1988.

Whole families, who had barely settled into their seats for the long journey across the Atlantic, were wiped out as a bomb ripped the Boeing 747 apart.

The bodies of some victims were never found. On the other side of the Atlantic, parents, friends, and partners were preparing to leave for JFK airport in New York to pick up loved ones who would never arrive.

Among those never to return from an overseas study course in London were 35 students from Syracuse University in New York, including twin brothers Eric and Jason Coker, 20.

There were a total of 259 men, women and children on board Pan Am Flight 103, that fateful night including the crew of 16 headed by American pilot Captain James Bruce MacQuarrie, 55.

The passenger list included people from 21 nations - although the majority were Americans - and from all walks of life.

The youngest were the two two-month-old babies, while the eldest was 79-year-old retired doctor Ibolya Drucker, from Hungary.

There were hairdressers, lawyers, teachers, engineers and a financial consultant, while many passengers were serving in the United States Armed Forces.

Also among the travellers were two female playwrights, a professional golfer, four CIA officers, a diplomat, a Nazi-hunter named Michael Bernstein, and Bernt Wilmar Carlsson, who worked at the United Nations.

Over the years some of the names of the passengers have become better known than others because of the high profile campaigning of parents or family desperate to discover the cause of the disaster.

They include that of Flora Swire, the daughter of UK Families spokesman and the most high-profile of campaigners, Dr Jim Swire.

She died the day before her 24th birthday as she travelled to America to spend Christmas with her boyfriend.

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded just after 7pm as, on the ground 31,000ft below, the quiet market town of Lockerbie was preparing for Christmas.

Many families had just finished their evening meal and were relaxing in front of the television, watching This Is Your Life, featuring Harry Corbett, of "Sooty" fame.

A total of 11 residents - seven females and four males ranging in age from 10 to 82 -died as wreckage from the devastated aircraft showered down on Lockerbie.

The plane's fuel-laden wing section came down on the Sherwood area of the town, exploding in a fireball made worse by ruptured gas mains and leaving a massive crater in the ground.

This was the area where the 11 townsfolk, all from Sherwood Crescent, were killed. No trace was ever found of some of the victims.

The Flannigans

Residents who died in their homes included Thomas and Kathleen Flannigan and their 10-year-old daughter Joanne.

One of their sons, Steven, who later became dubbed the orphan of Lockerbie, escaped by a twist of fate.

Then 14, he had left the house and taken his little sister's bicycle to a neighbour to ask him to help repair it just 10 minutes before the jet crashed on the town.

Another son, David, also escaped, because he was living away from home at the time of the disaster.

He returned in the aftermath to sift through the debris of his home, to find only a plastic watering can among the devastation.

Both Flannigan boys were to die tragically in the years which followed the bombing - David while travelling in Thailand in 1993, and Steven in August last year, after he was hit by a train.

The full scale of the human cost of the tragedy really hit home just after the start of the Lockerbie trial when the names of all 270 victims were read out to a hushed courtroom.

It took prosecutor Alasdair Campbell QC around an hour to recite the tragic roll-call as relatives of those who died listened in the public gallery.

For many, it was one of the most emotional parts of the trial as they waited in silence to hear the all-important name of their loved ones. Many tears were shed.

Relatives described the experience of hearing the names as "gut-wrenching" but insisted it was important that every single one was read out.

It was a poignant moment in which the dead, instead of always being lumped together as the "270 Lockerbie victims", were remembered properly as individual men, women and children.

***