Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi (pronunciation^ⓘ Arabic: عبد الباسط محمد علي المقرحي, ʿAbdu l-Bāsiṭ Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Maqraḥī; 1 April 1952 – 20 May 2012) was a Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am flight 103. He was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, Libya, and Libyan intelligence officer. On 31 January 2001, Megrahi was convicted, by a panel of three Scottish judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of the flight over Scotland on 21 December 1988. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty and was acquitted.

Megrahi unsuccessfully appealed his 2001 conviction. In June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Megrahi leave to appeal his Lockerbie bombing conviction for a second time. Megrahi abandoned his second appeal in August 2009 as an ongoing appeal would have prevented him from being moved to Libya under the Prisoner Transfer Scheme which was thought to be a possibility. He decided to drop his appeal two days before he was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009. Doctors had reported on 10 August 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer. On his return to Libya, al-Megrahi was hospitalized, then allowed to leave on 2 November 2009, taking up residence in a villa in Tripoli. He died on 20 May 2012, 33 months after his release.