Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son has accused relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie disaster of being “very greedy” for seeking compensation.

“I think they were trading with the blood of their sons and daughters,” Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, seen by many as the man most likely to succeed his father as Libyan leader, told the BBC.

“The negotiation with them, it was very terrible and very materialistic and was very greedy. They were asking for more money and more money and more money.”

In 2003 Libya agreed to pay the family of each victim $10 million. The final instalment is to be paid, after the US and Libya agreed a deal this month to restore full diplomatic relations.

Mr Gaddafi also claimed that Libya had accepted responsibility for the 1988 terrorist attack, which killed 270 people, only to get international sanctions lifted. “Yes, we wrote a letter to the [UN] Security Council saying we’re responsible for the acts of our employees, our people, but it doesn’t mean that we did it in fact,” he said in an interview for The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie and the Libyan Government, to be screened on BBC Two tomorrow.

“Without writing that letter, you will not be able to get rid of the sanction. I admit we played with the words. We had to, there was no other solution.”

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, said that money could be no compensation for her death. “So far as many relatives I know would say, we would gladly repay any ‘compensation’ money if we could just have our loved ones back.

“Financial ‘compensation’ must remain in its inverted commas. Money cannot buy our families back,” Dr Swire wrote in the Glasgow Herald. “I just wish that the needs of the relatives, namely a thirst for the truth and for justice, would be attended to, rather than an alleged hunger for money.”

Dr Swire was disappointed at the smoothness with which Libya’s admission of guilt had returned it to the international community, with Western companies profiting eagerly from Libya’s oil. “The Libyans have achieved what they want and Western commerce has got what it wanted, he said. “Many of us feel like pawns.”

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, is serving life in a Scottish jail after being convicted of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Last summerhe was given leave to appeal for a second time after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said that he may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The programme claims that Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who picked al-Megrahi out of an identity parade as having bought clothes used to wrap the bomb, had seen a picture of him days before the parade. The documentary claims that Scottish police knew of this, but did not inform the defence. “Such a recent sighting of the photograph could clearly have influenced Gauci,” Guy Smith, the programme’s producer, said.

The British Government said: “We were pleased that the US-Libya compensation deal will result in payment of outstanding compensation for British victims of Lockerbie. We believe it is right that they receive fair compensation while recognising that, for the families, no compensation can alleviate the pain and suffering of their loss.

“We disagree with the comments made by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi and our thoughts are with the families.

“Libya’s agreement to pay the outstanding compensation due to them helps to draw a further line under Libya’s past support for terrorism.”

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