Word: megrahi
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...statement released after Al-Megrahi departed Glasgow, the convicted bomber expressed sympathy for the relatives of the victims but reiterated his claims of innocence. "This horrible ordeal is not ended by my return to Libya. Perhaps the only liberation for me will be death...
...announcement, MacAskill said his decision was not influenced by questions of whether Al-Megrahi's conviction was legitimate. However, he also said he felt that "there remain concerns [around] some of the wider issues of the Lockerbie atrocity. There are questions to be asked and answered." Doubt in Al-Megrahi's guilt is relatively widespread in Britain, even among legal experts, close observers of the trial and the families of some of the victims. Robert Black, a professor emeritus of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and one of the legal architects of the Camp Zeist trial, tells TIME that...
...Megrahi was convicted in a specially convened Scottish court at Camp Zeist in The Netherlands in 2001. Prosecutors argued that he placed a bomb, hidden in boom box inside a suitcase, on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, Germany. From there, the bomb was transferred onto the Pan Am plane that went first to London's Heathrow Airport and then took off for New York City. The bomb exploded as the plane flew over Scotland, causing it to crash on to the town of Lockerbie near the Scottish border. Another man - Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima - was also tried...
...Richard Marquise, who was the FBI special agent in charge of the U.S. investigation into the bombing, calls the release "very disappointing." In an unusual move, Marquise and his counterpart in Scotland, Stuart Henderson, the retired senior investigating officer for Lockerbie, had written to MacAskill to argue against Al-Megrahi's release, reiterating their belief that the evidence gathered against him was compelling. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and seven senators, including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, also wrote protest letters to MacAskill. After MacAskill's announcement, the White House put out a statement saying it "deeply regrets...
...Many of those who aren't convinced of Al-Megrahi's guilt say their greatest regret is that he abandoned the appeal to overturn his conviction last week, presumably to clear the way for his release. Juval Aviv, a private investigator who was hired by Pan Am's insurance company to investigate the bombing, tells TIME that "as time has passed, flaws in the trial and in the evidence used to convict Mr. Al-Megrahi have been revealed. A new trial could have shone a light on a lot of things that were buried in the rush to convict...