A TYNEDALE couple who have been campaigning for almost 30 years to get to the truth of the Lockerbie bombing and their son’s death have welcomed the news this week that the case will be reviewed.

Ever since they attended the court case in which Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town in 1988, Jean and Barrie Berkley have believed an innocent man was framed.

All 259 people on board, including their 29-year-old son Alistair, and 11 people on the ground died. And now the couple, who live near Sandhoe, hope they will get some real answers.

They claim the UK and US governments of the time colluded in a flawed trial to sweep the matter under the carpet. “There are too many people who don’t want the answers to come out, but we have to remain hopeful,” said Jean.

Thanks to the unstinting pressure applied from three sources – the UK Families Flight 103 group the Berkleys help run, the leading Scottish lawyer and human rights campaigner Aamer Anwar and the family of Megrahi himself, who on his death bed still maintained his innocence – the case against the only person convicted of the atrocity will now be reviewed.

In a statement Mr Anwar said: “The only place to determine whether a miscarriage of justice did occur is in the appeal court, where the evidence can be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.”

The appeal against his conviction had to come from Megrahi or his representatives, this time his widow and son. In life he lost one such appeal, in 2002, and then dropped a second, in 2009, when he became ill.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said this week: “Having considered all the available evidence, the commission believes that Mr Megrahi, in abandoning his appeal, did so as he held a genuine and reasonable belief that such a course of action would result in him being able to return home to Libya, at a time when he was suffering from terminal cancer.

“On that basis, the commission has decided that it is in the interests of justice to accept the current application for a full review of his conviction.”