article: They claim to have evidence Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was pressured by ministers to drop his earlier appeal. He was allowed to return home to Libya in 2009, suffering from terminal prostate cancer, and died three years later. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has been asked to look again at his conviction. The involvement of Megrahi's family may overcome a legal hurdle against a bid for a re-examination of the case. The Libyan secret service agent, the only man convicted of Britain's worst act of terrorism, was jailed for life following his conviction in 2001, and ordered to serve a minimum of 27 years. He died in May of 2012, three years after being allowed out of prison on compassionate grounds. Shortly before that, he had abandoned an appeal against his conviction which had been brought after a four-year investigation by the SCCRC. Ministers have always claimed they played no part in this. But Aamer Anwar, the lawyer who is taking the case to the commission, said: "To date both the British government and Scottish government have claimed that they played no role in pressuring Mr Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. "However the evidence submitted to the Commission today claims that this is fundamentally untrue." Mr Anwar added: "The fundamental question for the commission is whether it regards it as in the interests of justice to refer a case back to the High Court where the convicted person himself had commenced an appeal on a SCCRC reference and then chosen to abandon it? "The answer might depend on the precise circumstances in which the appellant came to abandon his appeal. "Mr Megrahi's terminal illness; the fact that prisoner transfer was not open while the appeal was ongoing; and whether Mr Megrahi had no way of knowing that (Justice Secretary) Kenny MacAskill would ultimately opt for compassionate release rather than prisoner transfer or, as is alleged, that he was led to believe that he would not be released unless he dropped his appeal." Mr Anwar, who is acting for six relatives of Megrahi, who are not being named because of the volatile political situation in Libya, has asked the commission to consider the grounds of appeal before the court when the last proceedings were abandoned. He has also asked the SCCRC to consider further evidence. This includes claims that it was impossible for the bomb timer identified by prosecutors at Megrahi's trial to have been responsible for the bombing; and that there is evidence the bomb - which the court heard had been put onto a flight at Malta - had already been at Heathrow Airport, the flight's departure airport. Relatives of some of the 270 victims of the bombing - led by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died on Pan-Am Flight 103 - previously said they would seek to have the conviction reviewed. In a statement released last month, before it was known that Megrahi's family were to making a request to the SCCRC, the commission said it would have to decide whether
summary: The family of the Lockerbie bomber has instructed a Scottish lawyer to apply to have his conviction reviewed.