Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction to be reviewed as family fight to clear his name
A review of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction for the Lockerbie bombing is to be carried out, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has announced.
Megrahi died in 2012, at the age of 60, after being “controversially released early from his 27-year prison sentence on compassionate grounds while suffering from terminal cancer”, reports The Daily Telegraph.
He returned home to Libya to “a hero’s welcome after being set free by the Scottish government”, says the newspaper.
Megrahi had abandoned an ongoing appeal against his conviction after being released. His family later launched their own bid for an appeal, resulting in the new review.
Announcing the decision, Gerard Sinclair, chief executive of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), said: “The commission believes that Megrahi, in abandoning his appeal, did so as he held a genuine and reasonable belief that such a course of action would result in him being able to return home to Libya at a time when he was suffering from terminal cancer.”
On that basis, Sinclair said, the SCCRC would conduct a full review of Megrahi’s conviction for the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity, in which 270 people died, in order to “decide whether it would be appropriate to refer the matter for a fresh appeal”.
What happened in Lockerbie?
On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, in southwest Scotland, after a bomb concealed in a suitcase exploded. All 259 people on board were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.
Megrahi, head of security with Libyan Arab Airlines, was found guilty of the bombing and sentenced to life in prison in January 2001.
In 2003, Libyan ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility for the bombing and paid compensation to the victims’ families, but did not admit personally ordering the attack.
His son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has repeatedly claimed that the admission was merely a political tactic aimed at persuading the West to lift crippling sanctions and pave the way for lucrative oil deals. Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011, after more than 40 years of dictatorial rule.
What happened to Megrahi?
Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life behind bars in January 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing. He served just eight-and-a-half years of his sentence, before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009 when he was believed to be in the final stages of prostate cancer. He returned to Libya, where he died almost three years later.
Megrahi always protested his innocence, and others have claimed he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, including many of the victims’ families, who believe the truth has been withheld.
Megrahi lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002 but was granted a second hearing by the SCCRC. Following a four-year investigation, he began the second appeal that he later abandoned. “Why he did this has always been a matter for conjecture,” says the BBC’s Reevel Alderson.
“Many people point to the ‘Deal in the Desert’ between Tony Blair and the Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi as forming part of the pressure put on the Scottish government,” Alderson continues.
There are also questions about why then Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who sanctioned Megrahi’s early release, met the Libyan shortly before he left prison, a move described as “extraordinary” by the family of one of the victims.
What happens next?
Having accepted the application by Megrahi’s family for a review of the case, the SCCRC will now spend several months sifting through the evidence, including the original six grounds of appeal.
This evidence include “doubts over a witness who identified Megrahi as the bomber, and crucial evidence of the fragment of bomb timer recovered from the ground”, says the BBC. If the commission agrees that there may have been a miscarriage of justice, the case will return to the Court of Appeal.
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