The Price of Terror: One Bomb, One Plane, 270 Lives, the History-Making Struggle for Justice After Pan Am 103 - Hardcover

Gerson, Allan; Adler, Jerry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060197617 ISBN 13: 9780060197612

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

Synopsis

President Bill Clinton called it "an attack against America," but after Libyan agents planted a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground, America did not strike back. Instead, the grieving relatives of the victims did the unthinkable -- as mere civilians-and tried to force Libya to pay for its crime. Lawyers told the families that they could never sue Libya in American courts, and they were right. This would require changing a bedrock principle of international law -- a change that every government in the world feared and fought, including the United States itself.

Working virtually alone at first, Allan Gerson, a former diplomat and prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, took on the case and spent the next eight years on the families' quest for justice. In this high-stakes game of international power politics and legal maneuvering, there were friendships, jobs, and reputations lost, but a precious principle -- that of accountability under the law -- was strengthened and preserved. Now Gerson and his co-author, NEWSWEEK writer Jerry Adler, follow the threads of this extraordinary tale back to that deadly night over Lockerbie, Scotland -- and forward into a new era of international justice, when terrorists will learn to fear the righteous retribution of their own victims.

About this title

Review

“An amazing story… informatively and absorbingly told.” The New York Times

Synopsis

The terrorist attack on Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people and remains the largest mass death in peacetime of Americans abroad. In a compelling and powerful narrative, THE PRICE OF TERROR chronicles one man's impassioned search for justice for the victims' families in a court of law - a story that goes far beyond the recent trial of two Libyan agents accused of planting the bomb. Former diplomat and prosecutor of nazi war criminals, Allan Gerson took the case, paving the way for US citizens to hold foreign governments accountable for terrorist acts. Despite opposition from within Washington DC (in the face of a public outcry that the suspects be turned over for trial) and even from some of the victims' familes, he fought with a bulldog tenacity and emotions on fire. Now on the brink of securing a landmark settlement from the Libyan government, co-authors Allan Gerson and Jerry Adler tell a gripping story that will keep readers up nights, cataloguing the grief and loss that demand restitution, and raising provocative questions about accountability, deterrence and blame.

Together, they demonstrate how this case may revolutionise justice in the coming century, by putting accountability in the hands of private citizens.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060197617
• ISBN 13: 9780060197612
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322