TRIPOLI, (Reuters) – Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie, died of cancer today aged 60, leaving many questions on the attack and its aftermath unanswered.
Megrahi who said he was not responsible for bringing the jumbo jet down on the Scottish town and killing 270 people, was found guilty in 2001 but released in 2009 and returned to Libya because he had terminal cancer and not expected to live long.
That decision by officials in Scotland angered relatives of many victims, 189 of whom were American, and was criticised by Washington as Megrahi returned to a hero’s welcome from Muammar Gaddafi. That he survived for nearly three more years, outliving Gaddafi himself, who was overthrown last year, caused discomfort in Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting the United States on Sunday, said Megrahi should never have been freed.
Megrahi’s brother Mohammed told Reuters he had died at his home in the Libyan capital from complications from prostate cancer. “He was too sick to utter anything on his deathbed,” another brother, Abdulhakim, said outside Megrahi’s house.
“Just because Abdul Basset is dead doesn’t mean the past is now erased,” he said. “We will always tell the world that my brother was innocent.”
Megrahi, the only person convicted for the bombing, was found guilty under Scots law of secretly loading a suitcase bomb onto a plane at Malta’s Luqa Airport, where he was head of operations for Libyan Arab Airlines in December 1988.
