Terminally ill Lockerbie bomber returns to Libya

SCOTLAND yesterday released a former Libyan agent jailed for life for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, most of them Americans, because he is dying of cancer.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who has less than three months to live with terminal prostate cancer, was being returned to Libya on compassionate grounds, a decision strongly criticised by the United States, which had campaigned to keep him in prison.

“He is a dying man, he is terminally ill,” Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill told a news conference. “My decision is that he returns home to die.