No one who visits the memorial chapel at Lockerbie can fail to be moved by the entries in the visitors book. “Alexia, you fell here, sheltered by the people of Lockerbie,” runs one. “Jo, Darling, I’m here again . . . your name will always follow on to the next generation . . . The tears are still fresh, but the closeness seems so real,” says another.
They are poignant reminders of the pain and suffering still keenly felt by those who lost friends and relatives in what remains the worst terrorist atrocity carried out on British territory.
For most of them, the news that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the crime, might be flown back to end his days in the country of his birth will be a dagger to the heart. They will grieve, not just because the man who sent their loved ones to a terrible death is escaping his sentence, but because his departure will close off the only certain route they have of establishing the truth about the atrocity.
Others, including most of the British relatives and the campaigners who have been tireless in arguing that al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted, will feel themselves vindicated. They have maintained that to keep in prison a man who is dying of prostate cancer, when the case against him is unsafe, is morally and legally wrong.
Asked to comment on media reports that her husband, suffering from terminal prostate cancer, would be released soon, Megrahi’s wife noted that such rumours had been circulating for a year and that she did not want to be “disappointed again”.
“I hope that this time it is true,” she said. ”We pray each day that he will be able to spend Ramadan with us.”
SondraK, unapologetic Lympian Slayer 
