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Call for justice after death of Lockerbie bomber Megrahi

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The mother of one of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing has said she feels no pity at the death of the man convicted of the attack.

Susan Cohen, whose only child, Theodora, died on Pan Am 103 when she was 20, said that the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi deserved to die.

Megrahi, who was released from prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009, was given a life sentence for the 1988 terror attack, which left 270 people dead.

"He was a mass murderer. I feel no pity around him," said Mrs Cohen, from New Jersey. "He got to die with his family around him. My daughter, at age 20, died a brutal, horrible death. You call that justice?"

Mrs Cohen, now 74, reiterated her belief that Megrahi should have been tried in the US and given the death penalty. "Watching him be released from prison was very painful for me," she said.

She also said she did not believe he had been wrongly sentenced and called for the investigation into what happened to continue. "We cannot let Megrahi's death stand in the way of the Scottish and American government finding out who else was involved in the bombings and the specifics of how it was done," she said. "I don't believe conspiracy theories that Megrahi was innocent."

Among those killed over Lockerbie were Jewish victims from Britain, America and Israel, including David Dorenstein, a 25-year-old with hopes of becoming a writer, and Marc Tager, a charity worker from north London who was 22 at the time.

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