Lockerbie bomber's appeal to be dropped

The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing is likely never to emerge after the terminally-ill Libyan convicted for the massacre applied to abandon his second appeal.

The lawyers for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi said he had applied to the High Court in Edinburgh, Scotalnd to drop the appeal, after news emerged that he would be freed on compassionate grounds next week.

This comes as a blow to the families of victims who believed more information would have come out during the appeal.

It also means that the Malta connection, on which serious doubts have been voiced, cannot be disproved in court.

"It is very disappointing," said Jane Swire, whose daughter Flora was on the fateful Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York.

Mrs Swire's husband Jim, said earlier this month the truth was less likely to surface if Mr al-Megrahi, whom he believed was innocent, dropped the appeal.

Dr Swire had lobbied for the Libyan national, who has terminal prostate cancer, to be granted compassionate release to ensure the trial could go on. Mr al-Megrahi is serving a life sentence in Scotland for the murder of 270 people in December 1988.

"We thought the appeal might lead to more accurate discovery as to who did it. Now we will probably never know the truth," Mrs Swire told The Times yesterday.

"There is a lot of evidence to show there was a miscarriage of justice, which needs to be aired and seen by the public in a court of law," she added.

Mrs Swire said she would have thought Mr al-Megrahi would have wanted to clear his name. The 57-year-old always insisted he wished to do this before returning home.

"My husband thinks there must be some sort of cover-up and the truth is so unacceptable it must not get out," she said. She admitted knowing the truth was more important for her husband than for her: "I think for mothers it's the fact such a terrible tragedy happened. Exactly how or when or why or what isn't so important."

Malta too might never be cleared from its link to the tragedy. Mr Al-Megrahi was the only man convicted of placing the explosive on an Air Malta flight on December 21, 1988. It was said the suitcase containing the bomb was transferred in Frankfurt to Pan Am flight 103, which then headed for London before continuing to the US.

Robert Black, a former Scottish judge who was the architect of the original Lockerbie trial, told The Sunday Times earlier this year there was no acceptable evidence the bomb left Malta. Malta had presented records during the original trial in the Netherlands showing there were no unaccompanied bags on the flight.

Writing on his blog yesterday, entitled The Lockerbie Case, Prof. Black said it was "sad" Mr al-Megrahi decided to abandon his appeal.

He said the Scottish government had always denied it was ever suggested compassionate release would depend on dropping the current appeal.

"Why, if this is true, did he decide to do it?" he wrote.

He said it could be the former spy wished to keep the option of prisoner transfer open. This required that no legal proceedings were ongoing and could not be granted until the appeal was terminated.

A second option, Prof. Black wrote, was that Mr al-Megrahi believed his chances of being released on compassionate grounds would increase if he voluntarily dropped his appeal, and had arrived at a point where his wish to return home to die was so overwhelming he was prepared to take this course of action.

"Or could there have been some 'deal' between governments which involved abandonment of the appeal as one of its terms?" he asked.

Earlier this week, a Libyan official said an agreement for al-Megrahi's release was "in the last steps" but added a deal had also been struck that neither side would make any official announcement about it until he was on home soil.

"If there has been any intergovernmental agreement regarding Megrahi's repatriation, it would be interesting to find out just what it says. But that, of course, is never likely to happen," Prof. Black said.