THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.

Three months to live, huh?

Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi dies in Libya, family says

TRIPOLI, Libya – The former Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, has died in Libya, his brother told AFP on Sunday.

“He died an hour ago,” Abdelhakim al-Megrahi said, putting the time of death at shortly after 1:00pm local time.

The UK Foreign Office could not confirm the report Sunday, however it said it was “seeking further information.”

Megrahi, 60, was convicted in a Scottish court in 2001 for his role in the December 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Most of those killed in the bombing of the Boeing 747 jet were Americans.

All 259 passengers and crew died in the tragedy, along with 11 people on the ground.

Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and allowed to return to Libya. Doctors said at the time that he had terminal cancer and only three months left to live.

Megrahi was greeted as a hero on his return to Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya after having served eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence for his role in the tragedy.

This is why the notion of a “compassionate” release was so utterly foolish. If Mr Megrahi was actually terminally ill, he should have been, at the very least, kept in some sort of nursing home, under British control, until he wasted away and died, though death in prison itself would have been better. After his death, his body should have been buried in a pig sty.

Instead, he was allowed to return to Libya, receive a hero’s welcome, and spend not three months but almost three years with his family.