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Scotland frees terminally ill Lockerbie bomber
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-20 23:25

Scotland frees terminally ill Lockerbie bomber
Crash investigators search the area around the cockpit of Pan Am flight 103 in a farmer's field east of Lockerbie, Scotland, after a mid-air bombing killed all 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people on the ground, in this December 23, 1988 file photo. [Agencies]

Al-Megrahi's trial and conviction led to a major shift in Libya's relationship with the West.

Gadhafi engineered a rapprochement with his former critics following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He renounced terrorism, dismantled Libya's secret nuclear program, accepted his government's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the victims' families.

Western energy companies, including Britain's BP PLC, have moved into Libya in an effort to tap the country's vast oil and gas wealth.

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Gadhafi has lobbied for the return of al-Megrahi, an issue which took on an added sense of urgency when he was diagnosed with cancer last year. His lawyers say his condition is deteriorating and doctors have given him less than three months to live.

The question of freeing al-Megrahi has divided Lockerbie families, with many in Britain in favor of setting him free, and many in the US adamantly opposed.

British Rev. John Mosey, whose daughter Helga, 19, died in the attack, said Wednesday he would be glad to see al-Megrahi return home.

"It is right he should go home to die in dignity with his family. I believe it is our Christian duty to show mercy," he said.

But American families have largely been hostile to the idea.

"I'm totally against it. He murdered 270 people," said Paul Halsch of Perinton, New York, who lost his 31-year-old wife in the attack. "This might sound crude or blunt, but I want him returned from Scotland the same way my wife Lorraine was ... and that would be in a box."

Peter Sullivan of Akron, Ohio, whose college roommate Mike Doyle died at Lockerbie, said he believed Britain was putting commercial interests before the interests of the victims' relatives.

"The interest of big oil should not be the basis of a miscarriage of justice to let a murderer of 270 people be released," Sullivan said.

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