New Jersey Mom, Lockerbie Bomber, and BP

Eileen Monetti's son, Richard, was just 20, when he caught a Pan Am flight from London on December 21, 1988, to make it home for Christmas. Flight 103 blew up 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland with 259 passengers and crew on board, an explosion that also killed 11 people on the ground.

Monetti's son was a journalism and political science major at Syracuse University in New York, one of 35 Syracuse students who perished in the terrorist plot. Last year, she was horrified when the convicted bomber, former Libyan intelligence agent, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was released from a Scottish prison for "compassionate reasons"---a medical finding that prostate cancer would kill him within three months. Nearly a year later, Al Megrahi is still alive--he could live 20 more years--and there are new suggestions that oil giant, BP, may have lobbied for his release, to help facilitate an oil deal with Libya.

Tonight, Eileen Monetti spoke to me from her home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey: "It was just simply a prisoner for oil deal," she said, "As long as we're all dependent on oil, this is the way it's going to be. All these oil-producing nations have us over a barrel."

The four U.S. senators representing New York and New Jersey met with the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, during his visit this week to the United States. They want an investigation of the events leading up to Al Megrahi's release, but no one seems confident the former prisoner--now living at home in Libya--will ever go back to jail. As Eileen Monetti put it, "I don't think the British are about to invade Libya to get Al Megrahi back." Al Megrahi is the only person who was ever convicted in the bombing, although the Libyan government took "responsibility" for the explosion back in 2003, reaching an agreement to pay each American family who lost a loved one eight million dollars. The families then paid 2.5 million dollars in legal fees.

It's been suggested that Libyan leader, Moammar Khadafy, ordered the bombing to relatiate for
a U.S. air strike that killed his adopted, baby daughter. Now the accusation that British Petroleum--already facing massive, bad press for the Gulf of Mexico oil explosion and leak--may have helped the convicted bomber go free is re-opening old wounds. Eileen Monetti told me she refuses to let the Lockerbie bombing dominate her life anymore, adding I "try to live my life like my son would want us to live our lives." Still, she wishes to know the full truth about the series of events that led to the mass murder over Lockerbie: "I think I would still like to know that, before I die."

Mary Murphy
7/21/10