LOCKERBIE: MEGRAHI REFUSED BAIL
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will not be released on bail after his application was rejected by judges.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi had applied for interim liberation pending the outcome of an appeal.
However, Lord Hamilton, the Lord President, sitting with Lord Kingarth and Lord Wheatley at Edinburgh's Appeal Court rejected the request this morning.
The former Libyan intelligence agent, 56, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and the disease had spread to other parts of his body.
At a hearing last Thursday, three appeal judges in Edinburgh were told an "unusually compelling case" existed for re! leasing Megrahi on bail pending his appeal.
The court heard he was terminally ill and should be released on compassionate grounds.
Last month, he was taken from his prison cell in HMP Greenock under tight security to undergo tests at Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock.
Megrahi's defence team at the Court of Criminal Appeal said he did not have long to live and should be released in order to reside with his family in Scotland while receiving medical treatment.
But the Crown Office argued the gravity and extraordinary circumstances of the offence meant he should remain in jail at HMP Greenock.
They told judges that the prognosis is "uncertain" and that Megrahi has access to the same medical treatment in jail as he would do outside.
Megrahi is serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 27 years for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, which caused the deaths of 270 people.
He lost his original appeal in 2002, but was! given a fresh chance to clear his name in June last year when the Sco ttish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case back to appeal judges for a second time. His appeal is due to be heard next year.