Mercy and The Lockerbie Bomber

Lockerbie bomber sent home to Libya to die

Reuters

Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:36pm EDT

By Ian Mackenzie and Daniel Fineren

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A former Libyan agent jailed for life for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people flew home on Thursday after Scottish authorities released him on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, believed to have less than three months to live, was released on the order of Scotland's justice minister despite strong opposition from the United States, which had campaigned to keep him in prison.

Pan Am flight 103 was carrying 189 Americans when it left London for New York on December 21, 1988. In all, 259 people on board and 11 on the ground were killed in the bombing.

"He is a dying man, he is terminally ill," Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill told reporters in explanation. "My decision is that he returns home to die."

Megrahi, wearing a white tracksuit and baseball cap and clutching a white scarf to his face, walked uneasily up the steps to a Libyan aircraft at Glasgow Airport with the aid of a stick. The plane then left to fly him home to Tripoli.

In a statement issued by his lawyer after his departure, Megrahi said that he was innocent and had been wrongly jailed, but also thanked the people of Scotland for setting him free.

"To those victims' relatives who can bear to hear me say this: they continue to have my sincere sympathy for the unimaginable loss that they have suffered," he said. "Those who bear me ill will, I do not return that to you.

"This horrible ordeal is not ended by my return to Libya. It may never end for me until I die. Perhaps the only liberation for me will be death."

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