Lockerbie Bomber Dead, Conspiracy Theories Survive LONDON - Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only man ever convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, has died in Libya almost three years after he was released from jail in Scotland on the compassionate grounds that he had only three months to live. In retrospect, it is clear the former Libyan intelligence officer either cheated the Scottish justice system or he cheated death by surviving beyond his allotted time. But has he also cheated relatives of the Lockerbie victims by taking the real truth about the bombing to the grave? Almost a quarter century after a bomb destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground, controversy still rages over who was ultimately responsible. Mr. Megrahi was convicted in January 2011 of 270 counts of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges presiding in a special court in the Netherlands to which Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had allowed his transfer. The outcome failed to satisfy those who continue to insist that the Libyan was framed, for political reasons, and that responsibility for the outrage lay elsewhere. The controversy has even split the relatives of the survivors. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, told Britain's Sky News on Sunday: "I've been satisfied for years that this man had nothing to do with it." Other relatives are equally convinced of Mr. Megrahi's guilt and were outraged at the decision of Scotland's government to release him from his life sentence. That was compounded by Colonel Qaddafi's decision to give him a hero's welcome when he returned home in 2009. The release came during a period of improving relations between Tripoli and the West. Since then, both Colonel Qaddafi and his regime have gone, raising hopes that the full truth about Lockerbie might finally emerge. The chief Scottish prosecutor, Frank Mulholland, and Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were in Tripoli recently to prepare for fresh investigations into the bombing. The official view of Lockerbie, reinforced by Mr. Megrahi's conviction, was that the bombing was an act of state terrorism carried out by Libya, and probably ordered by Colonel Qaddafi himself, as retaliation for U.S. air raids on Tripoli in which the dictator's adopted daughter died. Some conspiracy theorists claim Syria and Iran were behind the bombing, via extremist Palestinian proxies. Western governments, some claim, put the blame on Libya in 1990 because they wanted to divert attention away from Syria at a time they were seeking its support against Iraq's Saddam Hussein who had just invaded Kuwait. It is not bad as theories go. However, a string of books and articles over more than 20 years that raised questions and cast doubt over the official story have so far failed to produce any proof that anyone but Libya was involved. The death of Mr. Megrahi, who protested his innocence to the end, will do nothing to end the controversy. The actions of Libya's rulers just might. Colonel Qaddafi's one-time hero had become a pariah, according to reports from the new Libya, and its leaders want to see the issue of Lockerbie behind them. Mr. Megrahi may have taken his secrets to the grave but Abdullah al-Senussi, Colonel Qaddafi's intelligence chief, is alive and well and sitting in a jail cell in Mauritania. Can he put the controversy to rest?