Top lawyers back Lockerbie appeal

Lockerbie appeal likely to be heard next year

EDINBURGH, Scotland - Two top civil rights lawyers have joined attempts to free the Libyan convicted of the 1998 Lockerbie bombing.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz and British human rights advocate Michael Mansfield have stepped in to support Abdel Basset al-Megrahi's bid to overturn his conviction.

His lawyers launched an appeal after he was convicted in January of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 107 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died.

Al-Megrahi is being held under Scottish jurisdiction at a special jail at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

His co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, a Libyan Arab Airlines official, was acquitted of all charges.

Dershowitz wrote in The Scotsman newspaper on Wednesday that he had become concerned that the legal standards of proof of Al-Megrahi's guilt had not been met.

He said he also feared "the wrong man may well have been convicted of the crime and the real mass murderer may not have been charged".

Mansfield -- a high profile British lawyer -- is also helping the defence team. Earlier this year he defended the man convicted of killing TV presented Jill Dando and previously he led the appeal that led to the Birmingham Six -- who were wrongly convicted of a 1970s IRA bombing on the UK mainland -- being freed.

But Susan Cohen of New Jersey, whose daughter was one of those killed in the bombing, accused the lawyers of spreading propaganda on behalf of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"As a victim of terrorism, I feel personally betrayed because Dershowitz passes himself off as the hero of victims of terrorism. He is just the opposite," Reuters news agency quoted her as saying.

It is unlikely that Megrahi's appeal will come up before next year, a spokesman for Scotland's Crown Office said.

Megrahi's appeal hearing is likely to take place before five judges at Camp Zeist where the original trial was held.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation he serves at least 20 years in a Scottish jail.

The New York-bound Pan Am flight exploded at 31,000 feet over the village of Lockerbie, 38 minutes after taking off from London on December 21, 1988.

All 259 people on board were killed and 11 people on the ground also died.