Lockerbie bomber’s family cannot take appeal to highest court in UK

Judges have refused the Lockerbie bomber’s family permission to take an appeal against his conviction to the UK’s highest court.

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York on December 21 1988, killed 270 people in Britain’s largest terrorist atrocity.

Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years – the only person convicted of the attack.

In January, judges at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh rejected a third appeal against his conviction, which was made by his son. Lawyers acting for the Megrahi family then sought permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court, but this was refused by five Scottish judges.

Aamer Anwar, the

family’s lawyer, said they will now seek leave to appeal directly to the UK Supreme Court, the final court of appeal for the case.

A written judgment issued by Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice General, said the court “has had some difficulty in understanding the exact nature of the challenge”.

It said: “Although the case is clearly one of

public importance, the proposed grounds of appeal do not raise points of law of general public importance. The principles of law which the court applied were all well known, settled and largely uncontroversial in the appeal.”

Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 while terminally ill with cancer and died in Libya in 2012.

Bombed Pan Am flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie.