The world marks Sunday the 20th year since Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York crashed at the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, as a result of a terrorist bomb.

A total of 270 persons from 21 different nations were killed in the incident including all 259 passengers on board, and 11 local people in the Sherwood Crescent.

The discovery of evidence of a bomb on board led to large-scale investigation in 54 countries. Eventually, two Libyan intelligence agents were charged in 1991 with setting the bomb but were brought to trial only in 1999 when Libya turned them over to the Scottish authorities.

Subsequently, one of the two, Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 under Scottish law even though the trial took place at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands.

Megrahi, who is currently kept in the Greenock jail near Glasgow, has denied any guilt of the Lockerbie bombing. After his first appeal against his sentence failed in 2002, in 2007 he was granted a second appeal by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which will be considered in 2009.

According to his lawyers, the 56-year-old Megrahi has prostate cancer. He has filed a request for a suspended sentence based on his health condition.

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