As the furore over the Lockerbie bomber's release subsides, calls for an independent probe into the 1988 atrocity are growing - with victims' relatives demanding answers. At the same time the bomber himself has vowed to reveal details to prove his innocence.
Many British relatives of those who died when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 want an inquiry to fill the gaps left by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi's trial nine years ago. "Our focus hasn't been particularly on Megrahi, because we are concerned with getting the truth," said Jean Berkley, 78, whose 29-year-old son Alistair died as he flew home to see his parents in New York for Christmas.
She described Megrahi's trial in a Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2000, where the Libyan was given a life sentence, as "unsatisfactory and unconvincing," and said much of the evidence against him was "insubstantial." More importantly, Berkley and other relatives still have no idea who instigated the crime, what motivated them and who else was involved.
"It's not a head on a platter I want, but the truth," Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, died in the attack, told the Daily Telegraph last week. Megrahi himself, the only man convicted over the attack, continued to protest his innocence following his release from a Scottish jail last week on compassionate grounds - and said he plans to publish evidence proving this.
"My message to the British and Scottish communities is that I will put out the evidence and ask them to be the jury," he told the Times last week. The 57-year-old dropped his second appeal against conviction in anticipation of his release, but expressed frustration at the move as it meant he could never clear his name. For the families and his supporters, dropping the appeal also meant the end of the last official examination of the evidence surrounding the bombing.
"That was deeply disappointing," Berkley told AFP. The appeal was sparked by a three-year review of Megrahi's case by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, which concluded in 2007 that "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred".
It referred the case back to the High Court, citing new evidence which cast doubt on the identification of Megrahi by a Maltese shopkeeper as the man who bought clothes later found in the suitcase carrying the bomb on the plane. "This was the only evidence linking him personally to the bombing," said Christine Grahame, a member of the Scottish parliament for the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP).
She believes Megrahi was framed and Libya targeted in the investigation into the bombing "because they were (internationally-viewed as) demons at the time. And now they're not." She declined to say who may have been responsible, but like other commentators noted Iran had promised retaliation for the mistaken shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by a US warship just months before Lockerbie.
Grahame has also urged the devolved government in Edinburgh, which took the decision to free Megrahi last week, to launch an independent inquiry - but admits that after 20 years, she has little confidence that it will happen. "These of us who are fighting for it know it will be shot into the long grass. But it (the truth) will come out somehow," she told AFP.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has said that while he accepts Megrahi's conviction, his administration would be happy to cooperate with any inquiry - although Scotland did not have the authority to launch one itself. Some campaigners have suggested the British government in London, the European Union or even the United Nations should get involved. But Britain at least has no plans to launch an inquiry.
"We have a convicted individual for the bombing and the conviction still stands. We believe nothing can be gained from further public inquiry," a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said. Berkley said she and her husband Barrie, 82, cannot find closure as long as the truth remains elusive. "I think most people would react like we have if they had been given some version of the reasons their relatives died that didn't quite match up... we shall persist with this," she said.