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Local Lockerbie bombing victims angry over release

E-mail|Link|Comments () August 20, 2009 11:50 AM

By Vivian Nereim, Globe Correspondent

Family members of local victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing reacted with sadness and anger today after Scotland freed the terminally ill man who was held responsible for the attack, which killed 270 people.

Nicholas Bright of Dover, whose father, also named Nicholas Bright, was killed in the bombing, said he was speechless when he heard the news.

The younger Nicholas Bright was just 16 months old when his 32-year-old father, who worked for a consulting firm, died.

“It’s been an ordeal my whole life, and it seemed like it was coming to some sort of resolution,” he said.

He said he thought it was wrong to release Abdel Basat al-Megrahi, the Libyan man who was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Scotland.

Al-Megrahi was released by the Scottish government today on the grounds that he should be able to spend the last months of his life in his home country after being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.

“He has three months left to live, and he’s allowed to be with his family, which is three months we were not allowed,” said Bright.

Janine Boulanger, the Shrewsbury mother of Nicole Elise Boulanger, a 21-year-old student who was killed in the bombing, said she was disappointed but not surprised.

She said her daughter, who was a musical theater major at Syracuse University, had been studying on scholarship in London. She was coming home after completing all of her requirements in seven semesters when she was killed, her mother said.

“These individuals died in foreign countries, without their families there, and we, as it was, had to accept this very low sentence,” she said.

“And now, not to carry it out?” she said. “You soon lose faith.”