Scotland needs to see Lockerbie bomber is sick, innocent and dying, family tells reporters

THE son of the Lockerbie bomber said last night that he wanted people in Scotland and the rest of the UK to see how ill his father was.

Television footage showed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi lying on a bed in his home in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with a machine monitoring his heartbeat.

Megrahi was found guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.

He was ordered to serve a minimum of 27 years before being released from Greenock Prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds because of a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer after doctors judged he had three months to live.

Last night, his son ,Khalid al-Megrahi, said the family had allowed access to the BBC to their home to show how the cancer was affecting him.

He said: “He’s very ill and he’s now in deep sleep and he’s stopped eating and we try to support him just by sitting next to him and we pray to God to stay. . .

“I want everybody, especially in UK and in Scotland, to see my dad, how he’s doing. He’s so sick, because I see in the news some people say he’s not sick and some people say he’s not at home and some people say he’s run away. But I would say I want you to come to see my dad and he can’t move from his room.”

Speaking about the Lockerbie bombing, Khalid said: “I really feel sorry because we are the same, we have family and we have brother, we have sister and we feel sorry about all the people die but we want to know the truth as well.”

Speaking on the BBC programme Reporting Scotland last night from Tripoli, Mr Bowen said: “The son I spoke to has spent a lot of time in Scotland, he told me, and he speaks English well as a result of that and so he certainly believes that their message that he’s a), sick, and b), innocent and c), dying, needs to get through.”