Lockerbie bomber wins right to new appeal
Afp,London
Scottish legal authorities 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 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. Meghrahi, who applied for the SCRC review three years ago, has always proclaimed his innocence. 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 in what was Britain's worst terrorist atrocity. 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.
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