Shadowy Libyan who took secrets to his grave

“I am an innocent man,” al-Megrahi said in his last interview, published in several British papers in December. “I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family.”

But the mother of a young aspiring actress who was killed in the Lockerbie bombing yesterday said she hoped the convicted terrorist had died “a painful, horrible death”.

Susan Cohen’s daughter Theodora, 20, was on board Pan Am flight 103 bound for John F Kennedy airport in New York when it exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988.

Speaking from her home in Cape May Court House, New Jersey, Mrs Cohen, 74, said she believed al-Megrahi should have received the death penalty.

“He died with his family around him. My daughter died a horrible death when she was 20 years old with her full life ahead of her. You call that justice? I feel no pity for Megrahi, I believe he should have died a lot sooner. He should have been tried in the States and given the death penalty. Watching him be released from prison was very painful for me.”

Mrs Cohen said questions still remain about how the bombing happened and who was involved.

“I think this was to do with deals in the dust and it is despicable. We cannot let Megrahi’s death stand in the way of the Scottish and American government finding out who else was involved in the bombings and the specifics of how it was done.

“I don’t believe conspiracy theories that Megrahi was innocent.”

Theodora was a student at New York’s Syracuse University and had spent a term in London pursuing her dream of being an actress.

Mrs Cohen said the loss of her daughter haunts her every day.

“There is no peace when you lose a child. You hear about closure but there is none. It will never get easier, it changes everything.

“I detest Megrahi, he was monstrous, and I hope his death was extremely painful and horrible. That would help, but it wasn’t just him that was responsible. I felt happy when Colonel Gaddafi died but I can’t feel happy now.

Al-Megrahi’s death, which came seven months after leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed, leaves many unanswered questions that have surrounded the Lockerbie case, despite the conviction. The US, Britain, and prosecutors in his trial contend that he did not act alone and carried out the bombing at the behest of Libyan intelligence. After Gaddafi’s fall, Britain asked Libya’s new rulers to help fully investigate but they put off any probe.

They also rejected Western pressure to jail or return al-Megrahi.

“He is between life and death, so what difference would prison make?” his brother, Abdel-Nasser al-Megrahi, said at the time.

Little was known about al-Megrahi. At his trial, he was described as the “airport security” chief for Libyan intelligence, and witnesses reported him negotiating deals to buy equipment for Libya’s secret service and military.

But he became a central figure in both Libya’s falling out with the West and then its re-emergence from the cold. To Libyans, he was a folk hero, an innocent scapegoat used by the West to turn their country into a pariah. The regime presented his handover to Scotland in 1999 as a necessary sacrifice to restore Libya’s relations with the world.

In the months ahead of his release, Tripoli put enormous pressure on Britain, warning that if the ailing al-Megrahi died in a Scottish prison, all British commercial activity in Libya would be cut off and a wave of demonstrations would erupt outside British embassies, according to leaked US diplomatic memos.

But in the eyes of many Americans and Europeans, he was the foot-soldier carrying out orders from Gaddafi’s regime. Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the conviction, said the verdict “confirms our long-standing suspicion that Libya instigated the bombing”.

The bombing that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland was one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern history. The flight was heading to New York from Heathrow airport and many of the victims were US college students heading home for Christmas