How release of Lockerbie bomber caused international backlash which refuses to go away It took 13 years and £100 million to jail the Lockerbie bomber, but the SNP justified freeing him - after eight years of a 27-year sentence - in a 20-minute speech. When Megrahi walked unaided from his plane to a tumultuous welcome from a Tripoli crowd waving Saltires alongside Libyan flags, it provoked widespread outrage. The SNP, it was said, had released one mass killer into the care of another - Col Muammar Gaddafi. David Cameron, then the Conservative Party leader, said freeing the only man jailed for the atrocity was "the product of completely nonsensical thinking." With each month that passed after the three-month prognosis was proved wrong, Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, faced further criticism from Americans convinced that oil deals were behind the decision. Paul Halsch, from New York state, who lost his 31-year-old wife, said: "This might sound crude or blunt, but I wanted him returned from Scotland the same way my wife Lorraine was, in a box." There were also claims that SNP ministers privately believed Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, despite the views of no fewer than eight Scottish judges to the contrary - three at the original trial and five at the first appeal. Mr MacAskill did accept in his statement that the Libyan could live longer than 12 weeks, but by the time of the second anniversary of his release, the case for his freedom due to ill health had unravelled. The SNP justified its position until the end, but never produced all the medical advice on which the decision was made. Critics asked why the country's biggest mass murderer would be freed when he could have been kept in a prison hospital, and said it was unthinkable that any other notorious murderer - such as the triple-killer Peter Tobin - would be freed in similar circumstances to live at home. It later emerged that Megrahi was receiving a "wonder" drug in Libya that was developed in London, but was not available in the UK. Megrahi was released solely on compassionate grounds after the SNP rejected a request to transfer him to Libya under a prisoner transfer agreement signed by Tony Blair. Mr MacAskill criticised Downing Street for failing to express an opinion on the issue at the time, and the silence from Gordon Brown, the then Prime Minister, was seen in some quarters as another sign of a "backstairs deal" involving BP, which was seeking a deal with Gaddafi. Those who have always blamed Iran and Syria for the bombing claim the decision averted an outcome to Megrahi's second appeal that would have caused serious embarrassment to the Scottish judiciary and the UK Government. But it was the Libyan himself who chose to abandon the appeal, when it could have continued in his absence, and even after his death. Megrahi said in his "ghosted" autobiography, Megrahi You Are My Jury, earlier this year, that he dropped the appeal because Mr MacAskill suggested it would be "easier" to free him on compassionate grounds if he did so. The extraordinary claim, which was strongly denied by the minister, amounted to a suggestion that Alex Salmond's administration offered legal advice to help Britain's biggest mass murderer escape prison. Following his return to Tripoli, Megrahi released a statement saying: "Many people, including the relatives of those who died in, and over, Lockerbie, are, I know, upset that my appeal has come to an end; that nothing more can be done about the circumstances surrounding the Lockerbie bombing. I share their frustration. I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out, until my diagnosis of cancer. His abandonment of the appeal damaged the relatives' long search for justice, although his family may now try to resurrect the case. The British relatives of those who died will continue to lobby for a public inquiry. But does the political will exist, 24 years on, and after the death of the only person convicted of the bombing, to answer the many outstanding questions about Britain's worst terrorist atrocity?