Lockerbie bomber comatose, near death

The only man convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet which killed 270 people when it blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie is "comatose" and "near death" in Libya, CNN reported Sunday. The news network said they had located Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, at his villa in the Libyan capital Tripoli, "surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip" under the care of his family. "We just give him oxygen. Nobody gives us any advice," Megrahi's son Khaled told CNN. "There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don't have any phone line to call anybody." It was not immediately possible to independently confirm Megrahi's condition. Megrahi was said to have only three months to live when he was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009 He had served just eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. He made his first public appearance in nearly two years in July at a meeting supporting embattled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi. The fact that he has survived so long has provoked indignation in Britain and the United States. Tripoli maintains a news blackout on the state of his health. Most of those killed in the bombing of the Boeing 747 jet headed from London to New York in December 1988 were Americans. All 259 passengers and crew were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.