In an effort to clear up his name, the Lockerbie bomber, Libya's Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, claims that a key witness in his conviction was paid up to two million dollars in a deal approved by the US.

The Libyan published new documents in his website on Friday that showed the US Department of Justice was also involved.

Megrahi insists on saying that he was not guilty in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

Megrahi abandoned an appeal against his conviction for the bombing after Scotland freed him last month on compassionate grounds as he is terminally ill with prostate cancer.

Megrahi was convicted in January 2001 at an extraordinary Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. He mounted an unsuccessful appeal in 2002. In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) sent his case for a subsequent appeal.

His lawyers said the documents released on the website were not produced at the trial but would have been used in an appeal, AFP reported.

According to the documents, the US Department of Justice was asked to pay two million dollars to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold clothing found to have been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.

US authorities were also asked to pay Gauci's brother, Paul, one million dollars for his role in identifying the clothing, although he did not give evidence at the trial.

The previously secret payments were uncovered by the SCCRC, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

The commission found the information about the request for payments in the private diaries of detectives in the case, but not in their official notebooks.


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