Scottish judges to rule on posthumous Lockerbie appeal

Scottish judges to rule on posthumous Lockerbie appeal

EDINBURGH: Five judges at Scotland's highest court of criminal appeal are on Friday expected to rule on a posthumous challenge by the family of the only man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The family of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, have battled for years to bring the case and clear his name.

Should they do so, the judgment could have wide-ranging diplomatic and political ramifications, and put Scottish justice in the dock.

In November last year, judges at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh heard three days of arguments from the Megrahi family's lawyers that his conviction was unsafe.

Megrahi was jailed in 2001 and sentenced to 27 years in prison for the mass murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over the Scottish town on December 21, 1988.

A total of 259 passengers and crew, and 11 others on the ground were killed in what remains Britain's worst terrorist atrocity.

The Libyan regime of former dictator Muammar Qaddafi officially acknowledged responsibility in 2003, and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to families of the victims.

But doubts have swirled for decades about Megrahi's conviction, including from families of some of the victims.

Megrahi was