Press Releases

WASHINGTON — Libya has offered to pay $10 million per family as compensation for the deaths of 270 people in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing, lawyers representing the family said Tuesday. 

They said the Libyan offer was a “vast multiple” of settlements paid in any other aviation or terrorism case. 

At $10 million per family, the combined compensation would come to $2.7 billion. Of the 270 victims, 181 were Americans. 

The lawyers have been negotiating with the Libyans for years, with a view toward reaching a settlement that would permit the lifting of both U.N. Security Council and U.S. sanctions against Libya. 

The State Department has not been involved in the negotiations. A senior department official expressed doubt that the Bush administration would approve the arrangement. 

The New York-based Kriendler & Kriendler law firm, discussing the case publicly for the first time, outlined the status of the negotiations in a five-page letter to family members. Copies were made available to the news media. 

Under the agreement, the money would be placed in escrow and released piecemeal as the sanctions against Libya are revoked: 40 percent when U.N. sanctions were lifted, 40 percent with removal of U.S. commercial sanctions and 20 per cent when Libya was removed from the State Department’s list of sponsors of international terrorism. 

In England, the Rev. John Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter, Helga, in the attack, said the money would go some way toward “lightening the burden” of his family’s loss. Mosey said, however, he would believe the money was forthcoming only when he saw a check, and in any case it would not deter the families from pressing their long-held demand for an independent inquiry.