On Wednesday a special Scottish court convened in the Netherlands convicted Abdel Basset al-Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland and sentenced him to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after twenty years. Megrahi's co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty and has since returned to Libya. Both men are or were allegedly members of Libya's intelligence service, and some, especially among family members of the victims, have expressed the belief that responsibility for the act ultimately rests with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi has decalred that Libya would never accept responsibility for the bombing and demanded compensation for the 1986 US bombing raid on Libya. The United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya after it surrendered the two suspects, and Gaddafi has demanded that they should now be removed entirely. The United States has indicated that it will push for keeping the sanctions at least until the relatives of the victims have been compensated, makingit unlikely that the sanctions will be removed any time in the near future. A lawyer for the American families has also announced that they will sue Libya for $10 billion in damages.