The funeral of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was due to take place yesterday in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing above Scotland which killed 270 people, died at his home in Libya on Sunday. He was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2001.He was freed from Scottish jail in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.His brother Abdulhakim said on Sunday that Megrahi’s health had deteriorated quickly and he died at home in Tripoli. Megrahi’s release sparked the fury of many of the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. The US - whose citizens accounted for 189 of the dead - also criticised the move. But some of the relatives of those killed believe he was innocent. In Libya, a spokesman for the National Transitional Council said Megrahi’s death would not close the Lockerbie file. From the beginning, finding out the truth about Lockerbie was complicated by connections real and imagined, by skulduggery and intrigue, between rival powers in the Middle East, from Libya to Iran, and including the United States, says the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen.
