Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing above Scotland which killed 270 people, has died at his home in the Libyan capital Tripoli.
Megrahi, 60, was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2001.
He was released from prison in Scotland in 2009 on compassionate grounds. He was suffering from cancer and was said to have only months to live.
When he returned to the Libyan capital, he received a hero's welcome.
Shortly before being freed, Megrahi dropped his second appeal against his conviction.
His release sparked the fury of many of the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster.
Died at home
His brother Abdulhakim said on Sunday that Megrahi's health had deteriorated quickly and he died at home in Tripoli.
He told the AFP news agency that Megrahi died at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT).
Last month, Megrahi's son said his father had been taken to hospital for blood transfusions.
Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, always denied any responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.
It remains the deadliest terrorist incident ever to have taken place on British soil.
Investigators tracing the origins of scraps of clothes wrapped around the bomb followed a trail to a shop in Malta which led them, eventually, to Megrahi.
He and another Libyan, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted by the Scottish and US courts in November 1991.
But Libya refused to extradite them. In 1999, after protracted negotiations, Libya handed the two men over for trial, under Scottish law but on neutral ground, the former US airbase at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
Their trial began in May 2000. Ffiham was acquitted of all charges, but Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison.
He served the first part of his sentence at the maximum-security prison at Barlinnie, in Glasgow, but was transferred in 2005 to Greenock prison.
Last August after the fall of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, Megrahi was reported to be "in and out of a coma" at his home in Tripoli.
There have been calls for him to be returned to jail in the UK or tried in the US.
But shortly after they toppled Colonel Gaddafi, Libyan rebel leaders said they would not extradite Megrahi or any other Libyan.
I don't agree with Jarl, but giving someone like that "compassionate" leave is just stilly. Life in prison means life in prison. Period.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
It was disgraceful of the Scottish government to release this mass murderer, and shameful of the new Libyan government to refuse to extradite him to the US, (after all we and our allies did to help rid them of Qaddafi) where he could finally have been sentenced to the death penalty that he so richly deserved.
I would like to think so Scooter. Or perhaps it was a purely economic decision. Treating him/taking care of the cancer would have been very expensive, and it was cheaper to kick him out.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
