Lockerbie bomber maintains innocence

Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie killing 270 people

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The lawyer for convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi has said his client maintains his innocence.

Megrahi, 48, was jailed for life after being found guilty on Wednesday. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty and can walk free.

Megrahi's lawyer Bill Taylor has up to two weeks to appeal against the verdict which would be heard in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands before five Scottish judges.

"He maintains his innocence, so there is nothing I can say by way of mitigation," Taylor said.

He said that the sentence should start from April 5 1999 -- the time the two defendants arrived in Camp Zeist, a former U.S. air base.

The prosecution case in the Lockerbie trial rested on proving that Megrahi and Fhimah intended to destroy or damage Pan Am flight 103.

As the trial reached its climax, Taylor had highlighted the errors in baggage security at Frankfurt airport to support his argument that others could have been the true bombers.

Clare Connelly from the University of Glasgow said from outside the court that the decision came as no surprise in spite of the case being based mainly on circumstantial evidence.

The prosecution team was headed by Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, assisted by Alastair Campbell and Alan Turnbull.

Boyd was appointed Lord Advocate, Scotland's top law officer, in March 2000, after the shock resignation of Lord Hardie which led to speculation that the prosecution's case was in trouble.

The mild-mannered Boyd, 47, previously held the post of solicitor general, number two Scottish law officer.

Prosecutors said Megrahi was a "high-ranking officer" in Libyan intelligence and had access to a timer of the kind used in the bombing -- made in Switzerland but sold only in Libya.

The defence team was headed by Kamal Maghur -- a practising lawyer since gaining his degree in Cairo, Egypt, in 1957.

He has been a judge on the Libyan appeals court and supreme court and has served as ambassador to the United Nations, Canada, France and China.

Megrahi's lawyer, Taylor, served as junior counsel for Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and for the Department of health and Social Security, and has specialised in criminal defence work since the 1980s.

Fellow defence lawyer, Richard Keen, said the prosecution case hangs on "inference upon inference, leading to another inference."

The defence has said a German cell of the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (FLAP-G) had the means and motive to attack the flight.

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