LIBYAN COMMUNITY IN MALTA PROTESTS OVER LOCKERBIE VERDICT, 2001-02-17 (photo)

A street busker continues playing his accordian as members of the Libyan community in Malta walk by during a protest march in Valletta on February 17, 2001. The protestors carried posters of Libyan leader Mumamar Gaddafi and of Abdel Basset Al Megrahi, who was convicted of planting the bomb which blew Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988. The protestors maintained that Al Megrahi was innocent of the murder of 270 people, for which he is now serving a life sentence, and is actually a political prisoner. Co-defendent Lamen Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty, but the Scottish judges ruled that Al Megrahi was a Libyan secret agent who spirited a suitcase containing the bomb onto a plane in Malta from which it was transferred onto the fatal flight in Frankfurt. DZL/CLH/