Dying Lockerbie bomber loses bid for bail freedom

The Lockerbie bomber failed in his attempt to be freed on bail today.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi applied for interim release pending the outcome of an appeal against his conviction. But judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected the application.

The 56-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which has spread to other parts of his body.

He is serving a life sentence at HMP Greenock in Scotland with a minimum term of 27 years for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which led to the death of 270 people.

Al Megrahi's defence team had said he did not have long to live and should be released to stay with his family in Scotland while receiving medical treatment. Prosecutors said the gravity of the offence meant he should stay in jail.

British relatives' spokesman Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said it was difficult to see the justification for refusing bail. "It has never been a goal of our group to seek revenge," he said in a statement. "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."

Today's judgment was delivered by the Lord Justice General Lord Hamilton with Lord Kingarth and Lord Wheatley.

Lord Hamilton said: "The critical question is, against the background of the atrocity of which the applicant stands convicted, whether the applicant's health, present and prospective, is such as the court should on compassionate grounds now admit him to bail. On balance the court is not persuaded, on the information before it, that it should. 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."

Al Megrahi was not in court today.

He was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in 2001. He lost an appeal in 2002, but was given a fresh chance to clear his name in June last year when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case back to appeal judges for a second time.