Justice for a Lockerbie murderer.(Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service)

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, 2-1:

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A dozen years after the fact, a measure of justice has finally been achieved in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. A Scottish court finally established what the world has known all along: There was a direct link between Libya and the terrorist act that killed 270 people on Dec. 21, 1988. It's a victory for the global effort to hold Libya and its leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, accountable.

The court, meeting in the Netherlands, rendered a split verdict Wednesday, handing down a murder conviction against one of two suspected Libyan intelligence agents, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 48, a Tripoli-born security chief for Libyan Arab Airlines. He was accused of buying the timers and putting a suitcase containing plastic explosives aboard a flight in Malta, tagged for the Pan Am flight. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years for the bombing of the New York-bound 747 airliner.

The court acquitted the other Libyan, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, and indeed the evidence against him was fairly weak. The importance of the first verdict, though, was clear: It established the Libyan connection to the bombing and was the strongest signal to date that this was state-sponsored terrorism.

There's more to come. Civil suits will follow and they should be easier to argue and win now. Libya will be expected to pay at ...