As Abdel Baset al-Megrahi boarded a plane bound for Libya at the Glasgow International Airport yesterday afternoon, it marked the beginning of his new life as a free man—and the end of another sad and shameful chapter in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

As we reported here last week, Megrahi was the only person ever convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The midair explosion resulted in the murder of 270 civilians, including 189 Americans—many of them college students returning to the States to visit their families during the Christmas holiday.

Now, two decades later, the only man U.S. and British authorities say is responsible for the Lockerbie massacre has been set free on “compassionate” grounds, after serving just eight years of his life sentence, in order to enjoy the final months of his cancer-stricken existence with his family and friends in Libya.

As we noted last week, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi handed Megrahi and another suspect, Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, to international authorities in 1999 on the strict condition that no group or state could be implicated in the bombing. In 2001, Fahima was acquitted of all charges, whereas Megrahi was convicted of planting the bomb and sentenced to life in prison.

Megrahi immediately challenged the ruling, but the court dismissed his appeal in 2002. The following year, however, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission began a four-year review of the evidence in the case. In 2007, the commission granted Megrahi’s request for appeal, citing six possible grounds for a miscarriage of justice.

Of particular concern, the commission discovered gaping holes in the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the prosecution’s star witness. Gauci, who pointed out Megrahi in a line-up as one who visited his shop two weeks before he supposedly planted the suitcase bomb on board a Maltese flight, had actually seen a photograph of Megrahi four days before investigators arranged for the line-up. The commission also located documents indicating that American intelligence agencies may have paid Gauci $2 million for his testimony at the trial.

All of this, plus any new evidence admitted before the appeals court, would have been examined again had the case been reopened.

Last week, however, amid widespread speculation that he might be released from prison on compassionate grounds, Megrahi abruptly dropped his request for appeal. According to the Daily Telegraph, the appeal could have proceeded even after Megrahi’s release from captivity on compassionate grounds. But in the end, he abandoned his only opportunity to clear his name in order to expedite his release.

“Some serious scrutiny will be required to determine exactly why Mr. Megrahi is now dropping his appeal and examination of what pressure he has come under,” Scottish parliamentarian Christine Grahame said yesterday. According to Grahame, Scottish officials had been “exerting undue pressure” on Megrahi to drop the appeal, the Washington Post reported.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill admits that Megrahi’s decision to dismiss the appeal may raise suspicions of back-channel dealings in the minds of those familiar with the case. But he insists there was no quid pro quo. “That was his decision,” MacAskill said of Megrahi, in a statement released yesterday.

But given the number of influential government agencies and organizations that would just as soon see this case go away, as well as the timing of the appeal being dropped, Grahame’s take seems much more plausible. As she correctly notes, “There are a number of vested interests who have been deeply opposed to this appeal continuing as they know it would go a considerable way towards exposing the truth behind Lockerbie” (emphasis mine throughout).

Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie attack, believes if the case were investigated properly, all roads would lead to Iran. For this reason, Swire welcomed the news of Megrahi’s release. “I think the whole process was a political stitch up from start to finish, which is something that needs to be gotten to the bottom of,” Swire told Reuters. “Iran’s involvement has never been properly laid out.”

As we reminded our readers last week, Iran’s involvement in the bombing is exactly the reason why U.S. and British authorities have willfully ignored the truth regarding this case. “The evidence strongly indicates that Syria and Iran were also involved in placing the bomb on the Pan Am Flight 103,” we wrote when the trial began back in 2000. But our nations wouldn’t face the truth back then out of fear of offending the state sponsors of terror.

We are paralyzed by the same fear today. In fact, for going on 20 years, U.S. and British authorities have willfully ignored the truth behind Lockerbie in a shameful attempt to avoid any direct confrontation with the biblically identified king of the south.

It’s all happening exactly as God said it would! According to the Prophet Daniel, when the Iranian-led king of the south is finally crushed, it won’t come at the hands of the United States and Britain. By the time this clash occurs between the kings of the south and north, the people of America and Britain—the modern-day descendants of ancient Israel—do not even factor into the prophecy.