Abdelbaset al-Megrahi 10 August 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer. On his return to Libya, al-Megrahi was initially hospitalized then allowed to leave on 2 November 2009, taking up residence in a villa in Tripoli. He died on 20 May 2012, two years and 9 months after his release. Several legal experts as well as the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial have vehemently challenged the verdict that convicted Megrahi, while Ulrich Lumpert, the Mebo AG engineer who testified to the validity of a key piece of evidence, admitted in an affidavit to lying in court and stealing the object from
Lockerbie the landowners, the Johnstone family, made plots of land available along the line of the High Street, producing in effect a semi-planned settlement. By 1750 Lockerbie had become a significant town, and from the 1780s it was a staging post on the carriage route from Glasgow to London. Perhaps the most important period of growth was during the 19th century. Thomas Telford's Carlisle-to-Glasgow road was built through Lockerbie from 1816. The Caledonian Railway opened the line from Carlisle to Beattock through Lockerbie in 1847 and later all the way to Glasgow. From 1863 until 1966 Lockerbie was also a railway