LONDON – On Wednesday, Scotland shall announce the results of the review of the conviction of the one man guilty of bombing the Lockerbie aircraft.
Once the conviction review result is revealed, his family can launch a fresh appeal.
In December 1988 Pan Am flight number 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland en route London from New York. The attack claimed the lives of 270 people.
In 2001, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer has been sentenced to jail for life on being found guilty after no one else was identified.
The attack remains to be one of Britain’s deadliest militant attacks.
Megrahi denied his involvement in the attack and died in Libya in 2012. He was released three years before his death by the Scottish government after his terminal cancer diagnosis on grounds of compassion.
Megrahi appealed his conviction first in 2002 only to be met with the Scotland High Court’s refusal.
In 2003, he appealed to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission from where the case was referred to the High Court in 2007 for a second appeal. However, this was abandoned in 2009.
In 2018, the Commission stated that it would conduct a complete conviction review and decide if the case needs to be referred for a fresh appeal. On Wednesday, the main findings shall be made public.
In 2003, ex Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility in the bombing and while personally not admitting to ordering the attack, paid compensation to the families of the victims.
In 2014, Scotland’s top prosecutor stated that no evidence had come up to cast doubt on the conviction. The Scottish victims’ families and relatives doubted his guilt.
The Lockerbie explosion’s victims were mostly Americans on their way home for Christmas. Eleven people died on the ground as the Pan Am flight crashed as a bomb exploded 40 minutes after leaving Heathrow airport.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.