Ailing Lockerbie bomber seeks release

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- The Scottish government Thursday said it had made no decision on whether to release the terminally ill man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am bombing.

The statement came amid reports that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, serving a life sentence for the bombing that killed 270 people, could be released on compassionate grounds.

The 52-year-old Libyan, who was convicted in 2001 but maintains his innocence, is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, CNN reported. An appeal for release last November was rejected but the court left open the possibility of considering later appeals.

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Scotland as it headed from London to New York. All 259 people on board the plane died along with 11 people on the ground when the jumbo jet crashed in the small town of Lockerbie.

Megrahi was accused of hiding the bomb in a suitcase on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, Germany. The bag was transferred to Flight 103 which went to London, then on toward the United States.

The case has had a long, winding path to reach this point. It took nearly three years for U.S. and British investigators to indict Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted, on murder charges following a tug-of-war to get the suspects released by Libya to stand trial.