Libya Seeks Return of Terminally Ill Man Serving Time for Lockerbie Blast

LONDON, May 6 -- Libya has requested that the Scottish government allow a dying prisoner, the only man ever convicted in the bombing of an American jumbo jet over Lockerbie in 1988, to be sent back to his homeland.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, a former Libyan intelligence officer who is terminally ill with cancer, has been trying to clear his name during an appeal process that has raised questions about his guilt. Because his prostate cancer has spread throughout his body and he has told his lawyers he wants to die at home, he is expected to waive his right to further appeals in order to be allowed to continue serving his sentence in Libya.

Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and given a 27-year sentence for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York, which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground in Scotland.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, told reporters Wednesday that he would not oppose Megrahi's being transferred to Libya "simply because I don't believe the man is guilty as charged."

But Scottish officials, who must now decide on the transfer request, will also hear from victims' relatives who want Megrahi to remain in a British prison.

The Associated Press quoted Robert Monetti of Cherry Hill, N.J., whose son Rick died in the bombing, as saying, "The American families are incredibly opposed to letting al-Megrahi out of Scotland."

In 2007, after a three-year inquiry, an independent Scottish review panel found that Megrahi "may have suffered a miscarriage of justice," and it referred his appeal to the courts, allowing it to go forward.

The panel cited new evidence that cast doubt on the reliability of a key witness, the owner of a shop in Malta. The witness had singled out Megrahi from a police lineup as the man who bought a piece of clothing that was found to have been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.

After Megrahi's conviction, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing and agreed to pay about $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims' families. Some analysts have suggested that Libya accepted responsibility so that Western countries would lift economic sanctions and end its diplomatic isolation.

Questions about who was behind the bombing have persisted for two decades. One much discussed theory is that Iranian-backed Palestinians brought down Flight 103 to retaliate for the deaths of 290 people aboard an Iranian airliner that a U.S. warship had mistakenly shot down six months earlier.

Many people whose lives were touched by the bombing had hoped that the ongoing appeal would bring more clarity to the murky case. But if Megrahi is transferred home, the appeals process ends. Only last week, Libya and Britain signed a prison transfer agreement.

Barrie Berkley, whose son died in the bombing, told the BBC: "We want the appeal to go through because it's the main means of us getting further information about how our family members died or why they died. We really want to know whether the Libyans were behind this and Megrahi was behind it."