Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted of taking part in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, has died in Libya of prostate cancer. NBC's Jim Maceda reports from London.
By NBC News, msnbc.com and news services
Updated at 10:38 a.m. ET: TRIPOLI - The former Libyan intelligence?officer convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270?people has died, his son told NBC News on Sunday. He was 60.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi died at home after his health quickly deteriorated. "He has been suffering from cancer for a long time and God choose him," Khalid al-Magrahi told NBC.
"He was too sick to utter anything on his death bed,"?his brother?Abdel Hakim told Reuters. "We want people to know he was innocent."
Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew to New York from London. All 259 people aboard the airliner were killed and 11 others on the ground in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, died from falling wreckage.
Scotland?freed him in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was suffering from advanced terminal prostate cancer and thought to have months to live.?
Reuters
Convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi speaks during an interview at his home in Tripoli on Oct. 3, 2011. He was transferred to hospital on April 13, 2012 after his health deteriorated quickly.
His release angered many relatives of the victims, 189 of whom were American, and the Obama administration criticized the decision.
Many speculated that a backdoor deal had been cut between the former regime of Moammar Gadhafi and the British government. With the fall of the Gadhafi regime in 2011, many in the U.S. and U.K. called on the new Libyan leaders to extradite Megrahi to serve out the remainder of his prison term, something Libya's ruling National Transitional Council refused?to do.
Lockerbie relatives: 'Never thought this day would come'
The family of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi tell NBC News that he is in a coma, without medicine and near death. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
Al-Megrahi, who served as an intelligence agent during the rule of Gadhafi, denied any role in suspected human rights abuses in his home country before Gadhafi's fall and death in a popular uprising last year.?
In April, al-Megrahi's condition worsened and he was taken to a private hospital to receive a transfusion of eleven liters of blood, but subsequently felt strong enough to return home.?
NBC News, msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.?
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