A “COALITION of the willing” behind the Lockerbie bombing should face prosecution, the minister who freed Abdelbasset al-Megrahi said today.

Former Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill wrote in the Scotsman newspaper that Mr Megrahi’s conviction was “questionable to say the least,” adding that he had “played a peripheral role but wasn’t the bomber.”

In 2003, then Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi accepted that his government was responsible for the 1988 bombing of US airliner Pan AM flight 103.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground in the Dumfries and Galloway town of Lockerbie, on which the plane’s wreckage fell.

Mr Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment, with the judge recommending that he spend at least 20 years behind bars.

However, he was freed in 2009 by Mr MacAskill, who acted on compassionate grounds as Mr Megrahi had prostate cancer. The release was ordered under a Scottish statute allowing the liberation of prisoners who have three months or less to live. He died in 2012.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recommended in 2007 that Mr Megrahi should be granted a second appeal. Though he dropped this appeal on his release, he protested his innocence until his death.

Now the commission is considering whether it is appropriate to refer the case for a fresh appeal.

It emerged in 2008 that Tony Gauci, a Maltese witness crucial to Mr Megrahi’s conviction, was paid a substantial sum for his testimony.

Mr MacAskill suggested that former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa should be called to give evidence if the case returns to court.

During the Libyan civil war, Mr Koussa defected from Gadaffi’s side with the help of MI6. He now lives in Qatar.

The former justice secretary rejected “conspiracy theories” suggesting that Mr Megrahi was an “innocent abroad” and that Libya had not been involved at all, but he said Libya “neither acted alone nor initiated the attack.”

He alleged the involvement of Iran, which put a bounty on bombing a US airliner after a US warship shot down an Iranian passenger plane months before, and he said the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Popular Command had accepted the contract.

It is now time to “look at new evidence and at others accused,” Mr MacAskill added.