Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, died yesterday in Libya, at the age of 60. His death comes nearly three years after Scotland released him from prison on humanitarian grounds, and 11 years after his conviction for planting a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.
John Ashton is Megrahi’s biographer and the author of “Megrahi: You Are My Jury.” Eileen Monetti’s 20-year-old son Rick was returning from an academic semester abroad on Pan Am 103. Her response to Megrahi’s death? “You know, it’s similar to the reaction I had when Gadhaffi was killed,” she explained. “And that simply is that it rids the world of one person who we believe has done evil but at the same token, it doesn’t bring my son back.”