Lockerbie bomber Megrahi dies in Libya

Tripoli – Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer, convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people has died, his brother has said.

His health had deteriorated quickly, his brother Abdulhakim told Reuters on Sunday.

He was released from prison in Scotland in 2009 on compassionate grounds. He was suffering from cancer and was said to have only months to live.

When he returned to the Libyan capital, he received a hero’s welcome.

Shortly before being freed, Megrahi dropped his second appeal against his conviction.

His release sparked the fury of many of the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster.

His brother Abdulhakim said on Sunday that Megrahi’s health had deteriorated quickly and he died at home in Tripoli.

He told the AFP news agency that Megrahi died at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT).

Last month, Megrahi’s son said his father had been taken to hospital for blood transfusions.

Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, always denied any responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.

It remains the deadliest terrorist incident ever to have taken place on British soil.

Investigators tracing the origins of scraps of clothes wrapped around the bomb followed a trail to a shop in Malta which led them, eventually, to Megrahi.

He and another Libyan, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted by the Scottish and US courts in November 1991.

But Libya refused to extradite them. In 1999, after protracted negotiations, Libya handed the two men over for trial, under Scottish law but on neutral ground, the former US airbase at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

Their trial began in May 2000. Ffiham was acquitted of all charges, but Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison.

He served the first part of his sentence at the maximum-security prison at Barlinnie, in Glasgow, but was transferred in 2005 to Greenock prison.

Last August after the fall of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, Megrahi was reported to be “in and out of a coma” at his home in Tripoli.

There have been calls for him to be returned to jail in the UK or tried in the US.