A Scottish court has denied bail to a Libyan convicted of bombing an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.
Lawyers for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi earlier this month asked the court to free him on bail because he has prostate cancer, pending the outcome of an appeal against his conviction.
Megrahi was convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jumbo jet as it flew from London to New York on Dec. 18, 1988, killing all 259 people on board, including 189 Americans. Eleven residents of the town of Lockerbie were killed by falling wreckage.
Lord Hamilton, Scotland's top judge, said that although he recognised Megrahi was suffering pyschological strain, the three-man appeal court was not convinced he should be released given the severity of the crime for which he was sentenced.
"While the disease from which the appellant suffers is incurable and may cause his death, he is not at present suffering material pain or disability," Lord Hamilton said.
However, he said the court would consider another bail request if Megrahi's condition worsened.
Megrahi, 56, a former Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted in 2001 after a trial held in the Netherlands under Scottish law and sentenced to life in prison. An initial appeal was rejected in 2002.
Megrahi is held at Greenock prison in Scotland.
A Scottish criminal review body decided last year that Megrahi was entitled to another appeal on the grounds that he might have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
"I am very distressed that the court has refused me bail pending the hearing of my appeal and the chance to spend my remaining time with my family," Al-Megrahi said in a statement read out by his lawyer Tony Kelly.
"I wish to reiterate that I had nothing whatever to do with the Lockerbie bombing and that the fight for justice will continue regardless of whether I am alive to witness my name being cleared."
Jim Swire, a Briton whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie and who has in the past expressed doubts about Megrahi's conviction, questioned the court's decision.
"The refusal of a return to his family for a dying man, whose verdict is not even yet secure, looks uncomfortably like either an aspect of revenge or perhaps timidity," he said in a statement read on his behalf outside the court.
"It seems tragic that Scottish justice has missed a golden opportunity to display mercy.
Libya had paid out more than $3.2 billion to the families of victims of the bombing. The move has helped Libya's international rehabilitation after long being regarded by the West as a pariah state.