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Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who brought a 747 down on the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people, has been released from prison because he has terminal cancer.
Like many visionaries, Mr al-Megrahi suffered persecution for his beliefs. At a time when no-one else believed in him, the Libyan intelligence officer opened Lockerbie’s first-ever international airport in 1988.
Pan-Am 108 was the first flight to arrive at Lockerbie International, but tragedy struck when the Boeing 747 overshot the runway and had already exploded in mid-air and additionally there was no runway.
It was a perfect storm: layers of failsafes, such as the plane being designed to not explode and the runway existing, failed within seconds of one another. But the high-profile disaster demanded that high-profile heads roll, and Mr al-Megrahi was forced to stand down from the airport.
The scale of the damage was such that even if there had been an airport underneath the crash site, it would have been destroyed. Flight 108 was to be the last to land at Lockerbie International.
