Lockerbie bomber wins right to appeal
Friday, June 29, 2007
A SCOTTISH review panel yesterday granted a Libyan man jailed for the 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland the right to appeal for a second time.
The Scottish Criminal Review Commission (SCRC) said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi "may have suffered a miscarriage of justice" based on new evidence it found during a three-year probe and on other evidence not submitted at his trial in 2001.
Megrahi, now 55, was convicted by a trio of Scottish judges sitting in a special court in the Netherlands of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. He was jailed for a total of 27 years.
The explosion on the New York-bound flight killed all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground in the southern Scottish town of Lockerbie.
A previous appeal by the former Libyan intelligence officer, who is being held in a jail near Glasgow, western Scotland, was thrown out in 2002.
The commission said it had identified six grounds where it believed "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."
The chairman of the panel, Graham Forbes, went on: "The place for that matter to be determined is in the Appeal Court, to which we now refer the case."
AFP
The Scottish Criminal Review Commission (SCRC) said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi "may have suffered a miscarriage of justice" based on new evidence it found during a three-year probe and on other evidence not submitted at his trial in 2001.
Megrahi, now 55, was convicted by a trio of Scottish judges sitting in a special court in the Netherlands of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. He was jailed for a total of 27 years.
The explosion on the New York-bound flight killed all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground in the southern Scottish town of Lockerbie.
A previous appeal by the former Libyan intelligence officer, who is being held in a jail near Glasgow, western Scotland, was thrown out in 2002.
The commission said it had identified six grounds where it believed "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."
The chairman of the panel, Graham Forbes, went on: "The place for that matter to be determined is in the Appeal Court, to which we now refer the case."
AFP
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