SEVEN YEARS after Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was added to the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives list.
The former Libyan intelligence officer, born in Tripoli in 1952, had already been indicted by the US attorney general and the Scottish lord advocate in 1991, three years after the bombing that killed 270 people.
A former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, Megrahi studied in the US in the 1970s. He married in the 1980s and lived with his wife, Aisha, and five children in the suburbs of Tripoli.
There were protracted negotiations with Muammar Gadafy’s regime and sanctions against Libya imposed by the UN before Megrahi was handed over for trial.
He had spent eight years living under armed guard, existing on a small pension from LAA and working as a teacher before he was taken to Holland for the trial.
During his trial, presided over by a special panel of Scottish judges sitting in Camp Zeist, his roles with Libyan intelligence and Libyan Arab Airlines were said to be crucial evidence in his involvement in the bombing.
The FBI had said that he acted as an agent for the Libyan Intelligence Services (JSO) and was a cousin of Said Rashid, also a senior JSO member, who played a key role in Libya’s anti-US terror policies.
Prosecutors argued that his job with Libyan Arab Airlines, which had an office in Malta from which Libyans were able to operate freely, allowed him to carry out the bombing.Megrahi served the first part of his sentence in Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison. – (Reuters)