Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie, died of cancer on Sunday 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 was freed in 2009 and returned to Libya because he had terminal cancer and was not expected to live long.
Megrahi’s brother Mohammed told Reuters he had died at his home in the Libyan capital from complications from prostate cancer and the funeral would take place on Monday.
“He was too sick to utter anything on his deathbed,” another brother, Abdulhakim, said. “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.” The decision by officials in Scotland to return Megrahi to Libya 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, 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, 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. The suitcase was transferred at Frankfurt to another flight and then onto New York-bound PanAm Flight 103 at London’s Heathrow airport, concluded Scottish judges sitting at a converted Dutch military base selected as a neutral trial venue. All 259 people aboard the aircraft were killed when it exploded and 11 people in the small town of Lockerbie died when homes and vehicles were obliterated by falling debris.
