3 Review(s)

The terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988 killed 270 people, mostly Americans, and was then the largest mass attack on American civilians. The Price Of Terror portrays the grief and loss of the families who ultimately demanded that Libya be made to pay for its crimes. Allan Gerson, a former prosecutor of Nazi war crimes, currently a professor of international relations at George Washington University, and Jerry Adler (High Rise), a senior editor at Newsweek, reconstruct the struggle for justice for the bomb victims and their families after the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. Gerson, an expert in international law, took up the cause of pursuing the Libyan suspects, even when the U.S. government did little and lawyers told the victims' families that there was no precedent for suing Libya. Gerson and Adler track the tragedy from the moment the bomb exploded, killing 270, through the trial in Scotland. In the aftermath of September 11, this timely account of the legal, political and emotional aftermath of international mass murder will be of interest to many.