Sept 22: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi walks the grounds of United Nations Headquarters in New York. (AP)
Relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing will protest outside the United Nations in New York when Libyan Colonel Muammar Qaddafi addresses the General Assembly.
Many are angry the Libyan leader has been granted a visa to attend the gathering just a few months after the only man convicted of the bombing, Abdel Baset al Megrahi, arrived in Tripoli to a boisterous welcome.
Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, despite pressure from the U.S. State Department and senior members of Congress to keep him incarcerated in Scotland.
Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, who was 17 when her father Frank boarded Pan Am flight 103, has helped to coordinate the rally, harnessing support from Libyan-American activists, former employees of Pan Am and a group representing the families of 9/11 victims.
"I can't believe it's been over 20 years and we're still talking about this," she told Sky News. "The problem is releasing the only man convicted of this crime has opened up everything again."
Michael J Wildes, the mayor of Englewood, N.J., obtained an injunction to prevent the Libyan government from pitching a traditional Bedouin tent in the grounds of a house it owns within city limits, which is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
"The man was complicit in the deaths of hundreds of people — 38 souls who were Americans from the state of New Jersey," he told Sky News. "He should be arrested for murder, not given a white tent and a red carpet treatment. This mayor, this American and this Jew is not going to allow it to happen."
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