Lockerbie bomber to learn of appeal bid

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - A Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing will learn next week if he can appeal to Scotland's High Court.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body which considers alleged miscarriages of justice, said on Thursday it would issue its decision on June 28 in the case of the agent, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.

The commission has the power to refer a case to the High Court if it believes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

Two hundred and seventy people -- 259 on the plane and 11 on the ground -- were killed when a Pan Am airliner, flight 103 from London to New York, was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

Megrahi is serving a life prison sentence in Scotland after being convicted of the bombing by a Scottish court, sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, in January 2001.

Libya told the United Nations in August 2003 that it accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials, and agreed to pay compensation to victims' relatives.

Some relatives and observers of the trial, where a second Libyan man was acquitted, have questioned the outcome and voiced suspicions that the real perpetrators were the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), supported by Iran as revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship in July 1988.

Jim Swire, a Briton whose daughter Flora was on board Pan Am 103, told Reuters: "What I heard in Zeist convinced me that neither of those two men was guilty as charged ... I think that Megrahi and his ilk are a convenient fall guy for the people who really did it."