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CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, N.J. — When the first verdict was announced, Daniel Cohen clasped his hands together and breathed deeply, overcome by emotion. 

Sitting in his living room watching television, the father of a 20-year-old college student killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 sighed with relief. 

“I’m happier than I thought I would be,” he said after a Scottish court convicted Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi of murder Wednesday. 

Then the second Libyan, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah,  

was acquitted. 

“Both would have been better, but the important thing is that the Libyan government has been indicted in this thing,” said Cohen, 64, who attended the first week of the trial in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, last May. 

Moments later he fielded a phone call from his wife, Susan, who watched a closed-circuit broadcast of the verdicts in Washington, D.C., along with other victims’ families. 

The Cohens lost their only child, Syracuse University student Theodora Cohen, in the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. 

Thirty-five other Syracuse students were aboard the plane when a bomb destroyed the plane and rained debris down on the tiny town. Eleven of the 270 victims were killed on the ground. 

Robert and Peggy Hunt of Rochester, N.Y., lost their 20-year-old daughter, Karen. The split verdict left the family determined to pursue civil action that they say will bring to light evidence of deeper involvement by the Libyan government and others. 

“We’re extremely happy that the one defendant was found guilty and disappointed that the other was found not guilty,” Robert Hunt said. “The word ’innocent’ didn’t sit real well.” 

Within hours of the conviction, al-Megrahi was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison. 

“Twenty years – and it’s not exactly hard time – for killing 270 people?” said Cohen. “Of course it’s not fair. But what’s fair for mass murder?” 

George Williams of Joppatowne, Md., who lost his 24-year-old son, Geordie, in the crash, said he was satisfied with the sentence. 

“We’re just looking for justice here. We’re not looking for revenge,” said Williams. “We’re going to hang in there, because we’re going for (Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi now.” 

“This is something we’ve waited for a long time,” said Paul Hudson of Washington, whose 16-year-old daughter, Melina, was killed. “To have it come out like this is, of course, very good because it means we’ll probably get close to full justice, and I think we’ll get much more – if not the full – truth.” 

The United Nations imposed sanctions against Libya in 1992 because of its refusal to cooperate in the case, and then-President Clinton ordered sanctions against foreign companies that invest in Libya in 1996. But some of the victims’ relatives say the U.S. government should have acted more aggressively to punish Libya. 

“We are not too hopeful for help from our government. The only reason we had a trial was the persistence of the families,” said Carole Johnson of Greensburg, Pa., whose 21-year-old daughter was killed. Beth Ann Johnson was returning from a semester abroad at Regents College in London where she was a psychology major. 

Victims’ families say the verdict can’t soothe the ache of their losses. 

“We want justice, we want those responsible punished,” said Norma Leckburg, of Cold Spring, N.J., who lost son Robert Leckburg Jr., 30. “But there will never be closure.” 

Leckburg was a product engineer returning to the United States from a business trip to Europe. 

In a federal building in New York City, about 85 family members watched portions of the satellite feed without sound because of technical problems. They later watched a replay with sound. 

“I didn’t have to hear the verdict,” said Bert Ammerman, of Riverdale, N.J., whose brother, Tom Ammerman, died on the flight. “I saw the evidence, and I believed all along that both men were guilty.” 

On the Net: 

Syracuse: http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/academics.asp?whatlockerbie