1988 Lockerbie bombing | US, Scottish investigators identify two suspects

US and Scottish investigators want to interview two Libyans they have identified as two suspects involved in the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing which killed 270 people.

The prosecutors have requested permission from the Libyan authorities for Scottish police and the FBI to interview the two suspects in Tripoli.

"The Lord Advocate has today, therefore, issued an International Letter of Request to the Libyan Attorney General in Tripoli which identifies the two Libyans as suspects in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103," Scottish prosecutors said in a statement.

"The Lord Advocate and the US Attorney General are seeking the assistance of the Libyan judicial authorities for Scottish police officers and the FBI to interview the two named suspects in Tripoli.

“The two individuals are suspected of involvement, along with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103 in December 1988 and the murder of 270 people."

The only person to have been convicted was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, but prosecutors now believe the two other suspects were involved.

270 people were killed in the bombing. Eventually, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi extradited Megrahi - a Libyan Arab Airlines official who worked in Malta - and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah to the Scottish court at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, for prosecution.

Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted of any involvement.

"I am an innocent man," Megrahi said. "I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family."

Megrahi had won the right to for a new appeal to his case after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission looked into the evidence, describing the key testimony against him by Maltese witness Tony Gauci as "unreliable".