Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted in January 2001 of the Lockerbie (Pan Am Flight 103) bombing, has always claimed his innocence. Then again, many criminals guilty of heinous crimes have often professed their innocence. Others, decades later, have been exonerated for crimes they did not commit.

I have always believed that if ‘’you do the crime, you do the time”. I have no sympathy for those who choose to harm others, and I have no problem with the death penalty, if the perpetrator is proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have committed the crime. But how can one be certain? What if the person is truly innocent.

Pan Am Flight 103 was blown to bits mid-air on December 21 1988, killing 270 innocent people (both on the ground and on the plane). Almost 12 years later, Megrahi and another man Al Amin Khalifa Fhima were brought to trial, accused of downing the plane. In January 2001, Fhima was found not guilty and acquitted, but Megrahi was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison. Convicted through circumstantial evidence, there are still questions regarding his actual guilt.

Fast forward to August 2009, after serving almost 8 years in prison Megrahi has no more than 3 months to live. Diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, the Scottish government decided to allow him to return to Libya on compassionate grounds. This has outraged many who believe he is a mass murder. And indeed, if he was, I think the whole world would be outraged, but there are those who still believe he is innocent, including Megrahi himself.

Upon his release Megrahi, still maintaining his innocence, said the guilty verdict was

“nothing short of a disgrace”, adding: “The remaining days of my life are being lived under the shadow of the wrongness of my conviction. I have been faced with an appalling choice: to risk dying in prison in the hope that my name is cleared posthumously or to return home still carrying the weight of the guilty verdict, which will never now be lifted.”

“To those victims’ relatives who can bear to hear me say this: they continue to have my sincere sympathy for the unimaginable loss that they have suffered.

“To those who bear me ill will, I do not return that to you.”

I can understand the anger of the relatives of the victims, but what if he’s innocent? Then he deserves to go home to his family to die in peace. But what if he isn’t? Not much can be done since the decision has already been made, and he’s back on Libyan soil. The only consolation we have, if he is guilty, is that he has only a few months left to live and that he will then have to deal with his Maker, and suffer the spiritual consequences.