Premiership of Gordon Brown into further talks over the issue. Finally, after a Commons Home Affairs Committee meeting between campaigners, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office on 19 May, Brown announced to the House of Commons on 20 May that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would make a statement on the issue the following day. Smith subsequently announced that all Gurkha veterans who had served four years or more in the British Army before 1997 would be allowed to settle in Britain. In the days following the release and high-profile return to Libya of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009, speculation
Lockerbie brightly decorated interior. The name Dryfesdale comes from the local river, the Dryfe Water, which joins the River Annan a little to the west of the town. Lockerbie is known internationally as the place where, on 21 December 1988, the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed after a terrorist bomb on board detonated. In the United Kingdom, the event is often referred to as the "Lockerbie disaster" or the "Lockerbie bombing". Eleven residents of the town were killed in Sherwood Crescent, where the aircraft's wings and fuel tanks plummeted in a fiery explosion, destroying several houses and leaving a