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05/20/2012 09:01 PM

Local Family Reacts to Lockerbie Bomber's Death

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The nearly quarter-century saga of one of the most deadly terrorists ever to attack the United States, has come to a close. Convicted Libyan terrorist Abdel baset al-Megrahi died Sunday at his home in Libya. He was 60 years old.

al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988 – an attack better known as the "Lockerbie Bombing."

With al-Megrahi's death Sunday, many victims' families revisited that deadly day, including the Hunt family of Webster. The Hunt's lost their daughter, Karen, nearly 24 years ago in the Lockerbie Bombing.

"He should have died in prison," her father Bob Hunt told YNN by phone Sunday. "I'll never forgive those people. This may sound non-Christian for anyone who might hear this, but anyone who kills innocent children and babies...is hard for me to forgive."

Hunt says al-Megrahi's death is a sort of delayed justice; the world, now rid of another man responsible for Lockerbie.

"Basically, he's number two," says Hunt. "The Libyan people got (Muommar) Gadhaffi. So that's number one; and now Megrahi's gone."

But Hunt insists, this is no time to rest on the laurels of justice.

"There's probably several dozen people, if not more, that hopefully will be brought to justice in the years to come," says Hunt, whose cause got a boost Sunday from U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer.

"We are not going to rest," said Schumer in an impromptu news conference following news of al-Megrahi's death. "For the sake of justice, for the sake of the families who suffer every day because of the loss of a son or daughter, husband or wife, father or mother – we have to get to the bottom of this case."

Schumer has taken a personal vendetta against Libya, al-Megrahi and the Lockerbie bombing ever since al-Megrahi was released from Scottish prison in 2009 on a lawfully "compassionate" pardon, due to illness.

Schumer now says he'll take the Lockerbie case to the Justice Department, the State Department, and the White House – all within the coming week – as he tries to re-ignite the investigation into who was truly responsible for Lockerbie.

But reflecting on the improbability of such an investigation 24 years later, Bob Hunt knows it may be another quarter-century, or much more, until any final resolution is reached.

"It'll be 24 years this coming December since this happened," says Hunt. "Time marches on; our memory of Karen is as bright as ever.

"al-Megrahi dying is just another page in the many chapters of this tragedy."