EDINBURGH - Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi launched a website on Friday with the aim of proving his innocence in the 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner over Scotland in which 270 people died.

The former Libyan agent released information which he hopes will establish his innocence on the website, megrahimystory.net, his Scottish lawyer Tony Kelly said.

Scotland's top public prosecutor said she deplored the move. Mr. Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini said.

Megrahi was released from a Scottish jail on August 20 on compassionate grounds after medical advice said the 57-year-old prisoner would likely die within three months from spreading prostate cancer. He is now in hospital in Tripoli.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release him caused outrage in the United States and political turmoil in Britain, including questions about oil links between Britain and Libya. Scotland has its own legal system separate from the rest of Britain.

Megrahi was convicted of the bombing by a special Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands in 2002, and an appeal against his 27-year sentence was rejected the following year.

The Scottish criminal review commission said in 2007, however, that there appeared to be a danger he had been a victim of a miscarriage of justice, and a second appeal opened early this year.

This in turn was abandoned in August and he was freed on compassionate grounds.

Megrahi said in the news release issued by Kelly's law firm: I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place.

As a result of the abandonment of my appeal I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process.

I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name. I will do everything in my power to persuade the public, and in particular the Scottish public, of my innocence.

Lord Advocate Angiolini said the only proper forum for deciding guilt or innocence was the criminal court.

I deplore the efforts by Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media after he has abandoned his second appeal against conviction, she said.

The website on Friday issued documents relating to the first leg of his appeal in which his defense counsel questioned the identification process and other evidence the prosecution had used to link Megrahi to the bombing in the original trial.

Asked by Reuters if he was connected with the website, Kelly said: No, it's published by Mr. Megrahi himself.

He would not comment on Megrahi's health.
(Additional reporting by Tim Castle; editing by Robin Pomeroy)

United kingdom Libya