This Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 file photo shows Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, center, being helped down the airplane steps on his arrival at an airport in Tripoli, Libya. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died Sunday May 20, 2012 nearly three years after he was released from a Scottish prison to the outrage of the relatives of the attack’s 270 victims. He was 60. (AP Photo)MEERA SELVA and VERENA DOBNIK
NEW YORK (AP) – The death of the only man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has left some victims’ relatives relieved and others raising questions about his guilt and whether others went unpunished.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence official died Sunday of cancer, his family said. His death renewed pleas from some victims’ relatives for further investigation of the bombing.
“It closes a chapter but it doesn’t close the book. We know he wasn’t the only person involved,” Frank Dugan, president of the group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said from Alexandria, Va.
Al-Megrahi was convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town on Dec. 21, 1988. The bombing killed 270 people, many of them New York and New Jersey residents. Syracuse University in central New York was particularly hard hit: 35 students on the way home for Christmas break died in the bombing.