EDINBURGH, Aug 20 A former Libyan agent jailed for life for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people flew home on Thursday after Scottish authorities released him because he is dying of cancer.

Abdel Basset Al Megrahi, believed to have less than three months to live, was freed on compassionate grounds, a decision strongly criticised by the United States, which had campaigned to keep him in prison. Many of the victims were Americans.

“He is a dying man, he is terminally ill,” Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill told a news conference. “My decision is that he returns home to die.”

Wearing a white track-suit and baseball cap and with a white scarf clutched to his face, Megrahi walked up the steps to a waiting Libyan aircraft with the aid of a stick. The plane then left Glasgow Airport to fly him home to Tripoli.

The US government said it “deeply regrets” the decision. “As we have expressed repeatedly to officials of the government of the United Kingdom and to Scottish authorities, we continue to believe that Megrahi should serve out his sentence in Scotland,” the White House said in a statement.

Megrahi, 57, is the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which blew up in mid-air above the Scottish town of Lockerbie on Dec 21, 1988. He lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002, but a Scottish review of his case ruled in 2007 that there might have been a miscarriage of justice.

Relatives of many of the 189 American victims thought Megrahi should have served his full life sentence in prison.

Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, a group that represents the families of US victims, said he understood the Libyan government had promised that Megrahi would not “go back to a hero's welcome”.

“There is going to be no dancing in the end-zone, as the expression goes,” he said. Yet, hundreds of young Libyans gathered at Tripoli's Mitiga Airport to receive Megrahi.

Many banners carried the name of Libya's National Youth Association, a supporter of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. One read “You promised and you fulfilled the promise and you returned Abdel Basset Al Megrahi to his family”.—Reuters