Lockerbie bomber dies in Libya

TRIPOLI, Libya - Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died Sunday at home in Tripoli, nearly three years after he was released from a Scottish prison to the outrage of the relatives of the attack's 270 victims. He was 60.

Scotland released Megrahi on Aug. 20, 2009, on compassionate grounds, allowing him to return home to die after he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. At the time, doctors predicted he had only three months to live.

Anger over the release was further stoked by the hero's welcome he received on his arrival in Libya - and by subsequent allegations that London had sought his release to preserve business interests in the oil-rich North African nation, strongly denied by British and Scottish leaders.

Megrahi insisted he was innocent. He kept a strict silence after his release, living in the family villa surrounded by high walls in a posh Tripoli neighborhood, mostly bedridden or taking a few steps with a cane. Libyan authorities sealed him off from public access. When the one-year anniversary of his release passed, some who visited him said Megrahi bitterly mused that the world was rooting for him to die.

His son Khaled al-Megrahi confirmed in a telephone interview that his father had died, but hung up before giving additional details.

Saad Nasser al-Megrahi, a relative and a member of the ruling National Transitional Council, said that Megrahi's health had seriously deteriorated in recent days and that he died of cancer-related complications.

To the end, Megrahi insisted he had had nothing to do with the bombing, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

"I am an innocent man," Megrahi said in his last interview, published in December in several British papers. "I am about to die, and I ask now to be left in peace with my family."

The father of one of the Lockerbie victims said Megrahi's death was, "to a degree, a relief" and insisted that his 2009 release from jail had been a political deal.

"If he had been that bad three years ago, he wouldn't have lived this long. It was a political deal," said Glenn Johnson of Greensburg, Pa., whose daughter, Beth Ann Johnson, 21, was killed in the bombing.

Megrahi's death, seven months after ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi was killed, leaves many unanswered questions about the Lockerbie case, despite the conviction.

A spokesman for some British families who lost loved ones in the bombing said he always believed Megrahi was innocent.

"His death is to be deeply regretted," David Ben-Ayreah said. "As someone who attended the trial, I have never taken the view that Megrahi was guilty. Megrahi is the 271st victim of Lockerbie."

The United States, Britain, and prosecutors in his trial contended that he had not acted alone and that he had carried out the bombing at the behest of Libyan intelligence. After Gadhafi's fall, Britain asked Libya's new rulers to help fully investigate, but they put off any probe.

The bombing that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland, was one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern history. The flight was heading to New York from London's Heathrow Airport, and many of the victims were American college students flying home for Christmas.