Flight 103 families: Gadhafi a 'madman'

As Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is besieged by mass protests in his own country and buffeted by criticism and United Nations sanctions abroad, several families of the Long Islanders killed in the 1988 bombing attack of Pan Am Flight 103 said Sunday the news is welcome, but also cold comfort.

"This came 23 years too late for him. Now he deserves what he gets," said Luisa Della Ripa, 68, of Floral Park, whose husband, Gabriel Della Ripa, 46, was returning to New York on the doomed Heathrow to Kennedy Airport flight after visiting his mother.

"We should sue him for every penny he has and give it to his people. And they should hang him by his feet," Della Ripa said.

The Dec. 21 bombing killed 270 people, including 11 from Long Island and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. Just last week, a former Libyan official claimed Gadhafi himself had given the order for the bombing.

In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted in connection with the attack and sentenced to life in prison. But he was freed in 2009 on compassionate-release grounds after doctors said was suffering from terminal cancer and had only months to live. Al-Megrahi returned to Libya, where he is still living.

While Libya admitted responsibility for the attack after al-Megrahi's conviction, last week Gadhafi's former justice minister told a Swedish newspaper that he had evidence that Gadhafi had personally ordered the bombing, although he did not produce the proof.

"We knew that," said Judi Papadopoulos, whose husband, Chris Papadopoulos, 45, of Lawrence, was returning from a business trip on Flight 103. "This shouldn't be news to anybody in the world. He's a madman and always was."

Peter Lowenstein, 76, of Montauk, whose 21-year-old son Alexander was on the flight, said he hopes that recent events mean Gadhafi's reign will soon come to an end.

"I'm delighted to see that things are happening in Libya, and I would be more delighted if Gadhafi were finally brought down and preferably tried as a war criminal," he said.

But in the larger scheme of things, Lowenstein said, what happens to Gadhafi still won't change the fact that his son - and 269 others - are gone forever.

"Our son is dead - he's not coming back to life. And the tragedy has happened," Lowenstein said. "So it really doesn't change a whole lot except perhaps make us feel a little better."