Release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

The release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds was a decision by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Megrahi was convicted on 31 January 2001 by a special Scottish Court in the Netherlands of the bomb attack on Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 (the "Lockerbie bombing"). On 20 August 2009, having served 8½ years of a life sentence, his release was authorised by MacAskill. The decision attracted significant news coverage, engendering widespread celebration in Libya, a largely hostile reaction in the United States and a more equally divided reaction in Britain.

His prolonged survival, exceeding the approximate three months suggested in August 2009, generated much controversy. He had been released from the hospital and was living at his family’s villa in Libya. His death was announced on 20 May 2012.

Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route—a Boeing 747–121 named Clipper Maid of the Seas—was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie, southern Scotland, were killed as large sections of the plane fell in and around the town, bringing total fatalities to 270.

After a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a station manager for LAA, were indicted for the bombing in November 1991. Libya refused to hand them over. After UN sanctions prompted negotiations, Libya agreed to bench trial in the Netherlands before a Scottish court. The United States was given what the then British ambassador, speaking in a personal capacity in August 2009, characterised as a "clear political and diplomatic understanding" that Megrahi would serve his full sentence in Scotland.

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