IF YOU don't want to die in prison, don't murder 270 people.

That seems a fairly straightforward rule of thumb for a government to uphold: Lock mass murderers away and throw away the key.

However, Scottish courts broke that simple rule by letting Abdel Baset al-Megrahi go home to Libya last week.

Predictably, a horde of young Muslims gave the execrable excuse for a man a hero's welcome. Some even threw flowers in his path.

If Scotland simply had to return al-Megrahi to his home, a better course of action would have been to release him to Libyan airspace, about 31,000 feet up.

The celebrators could have then thrown flowers over his remains.

From 31,000 feet up, the cruising altitude of the 747 jet that al-Megrahi bombed, it took his victims some two minutes to crash to the earth. Pan-Am Flight 103 split into two parts after the bomb went off under the cockpit.

The crew and passengers, mostly Americans flying from London to New York, would have been subjected to tornado-force winds just after the explosion. Those who weren't belted in blew out of the plane. The sudden change in air pressure caused the victims' lungs to first expand and then collapse.

But forensic examiners say that some of the ill-fated passengers might have regained consciousness as the plane plummeted through more oxygen-rich air. They would have known they were going to die.

Al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer at the time of the attack, deserved no release on compassionate grounds. Where was his compassion for the men and women, the children who were on that flight?

If anyone deserved to rot to death behind bars, it was this man.

Instead, Scotland has given Muslim extremists a new hero to cheer.