Scots free Pan Am 103 bomber

LONDON – A former Libyan secret service agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing returned home Thursday to Tripoli, greeted by cheering crowds after being freed from a Scottish prison – a release that President Barack Obama called “a mistake.”

Scottish authorities released Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who is dying from prostate cancer, for humanitarian reasons after he served eight years of a life sentence. Al-Megrahi is the only person convicted of a crime in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, 189 of them American.

As al-Megrahi, 57, was in the air on his flight to Libya, Obama told a radio interviewer that “we’re now in contact with the Libyan government, and want to make sure that if in fact this transfer has taken place, that he’s not welcomed back in some way, but instead should be under house arrest. We’ve also obviously been in contact with the families of the Pan Am victims, and indicated to them that we don’t think this was appropriate.”

Arriving at an airport on Tripoli’s outskirts, al-Megrahi was met by hundreds of people waving Libyan and Scottish flags. He wore a dark suit and walked slowly with a stick.

Many family members said the release re-opened their pain, decades after the explosion.

Glenn Johnson, whose daughter Beth Ann was studying in London and returning home for Christmas when she died, said in a phone interview from Pennsylvania that he was “just devastated. How can a person who killed 270 people, who had no compassion for them, be given compassion? It is another tragedy families have to suffer.”

Brian Flynn, a New York City resident whose brother J.P. Flynn died in the crash, said, “You just don’t let convicted terrorists go.”

Al-Megrahi continued to maintain his innocence Thursday. In a statement issued by his lawyers, he said, “I say in the clearest possible terms, which I hope every person in every land will hear: All of this I have had to endure for something that I did not do.”

The bombing on Dec. 21, 1988, ripped through the jetliner flying from London to New York, killing all 259 on board. Another 11 people on the ground were killed from the crashing debris. Al-Megrahi was convicted in a Scottish court held in the Netherlands and sentenced to serve a minimum of 27 years of a life sentence.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who made the decision to release al-Megrahi, said at a news conference in Edinburgh that humanity was a defining characteristic of the Scottish people, and that “our belief dictates that justice be served but mercy be shown.”

MacAskill said that after seeking medical advice he determined that al-Megrahi had about three months to live, a condition considered appropriate for release on compassionate grounds in Scotland.