Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of planting a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.
All 259 people on board were killed along with 11 others on the ground.
Al-Megrahi, 57, who was convicted by a panel of Scottish judges at Camp Zeist, a special court set up in the Netherlands in 2001.
However, he has always protested his innocence.
He has insisted he was an airline executive, but prosecutors at his trial described him as an intelligence officer for the Libyan Intelligence Services, which the court accepted.
'Most Wanted' list
Al-Megrahi was charged after he was identified by a Maltese shopkeeper as the man who bought clothes that were found in the suitcase carrying the bomb planted on the aircraft.
Scorched clothes found at the site in Scotland had been traced back to a shop in Malta.
It is believed that the bomb, wrapped in the garments, was placed in a suitcase, checked into a flight from Malta's Luqa airport and then transferred to the Pan Am flight in London.
In the 1990s, al-Megrahi was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, with offers of $4 million for his arrest.
Special court
Al-Megrahi was eventually handed over by the Libyan authorities under a UN-brokered deal, where he was held and then tried at the special court in the Netherlands.
At the trial, three judges found him guilty and sentenced him to a minimum of 27 years in jail.
Al-Megrahi was imprisoned in Scotland, spending the first part of his sentence in Barlinnie prison in Glasgow, before being moved in 2005 to Greenock.
Despite the guilty verdict, many believed that those really responsible for the Lockerbie disaster had escaped justice.
An appeal made in 2002 over al-Megrahi's conviction was unanimously rejected by a court of five judges.
But a judicial review of his case two years ago raised serious questions about the evidence used to convict him, including the reliability of the evidence given by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper.
It was suggested that Gauci may have seen a photo of al-Megrahi in a magazine days before picking him out of a line-up.
US education
Al-Megrahi was born in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in 1952. Fluent in Arabic and with a strong command of English, he studied in the US and spent some time in Britain during the 1970s.
He married in the 1980s, becoming the father of five children who grew up in Libyan capital.
Last year, while in detention, al-Megrahi was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, which his lawyer said was incurable.
This led Libya, which spent years lobbying for his release, to push British authorities to grant him compassionate release.
Al-Megrahi dropped his second appeal in August 2009, in a bid to help clear the way for a prison transfer or compassionate release in order to allow him to return to his homeland.
But many have criticised the move, saying questions about wrongful conviction will now never be brought to light.
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