A Libyan intelligence agent will learn this week if he can appeal against his conviction for blowing a Pan Am airliner out of the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988.
An eight-member independent review commission will announce at noon (1100 GMT) on Thursday whether it will refer the case of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to the Scottish High Court as a possible miscarriage of justice.
If Megrahi were to appeal and win, it would throw wide open the question of who ordered and carried out the bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.
Victims' relatives, legal sources and diplomatic analysts said such an outcome could also prompt compensation demands from Libya, which has paid more than $2 billion to victims' families on the premise that Megrahi was guilty.
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