Report: Lockerbie "Bomber" Could Go Free

Only one person has been convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Now a three-year investigation into that conviction will reportedly say he did not have a fair trial and should be released.

CBS News correspondent Larry Miller reports that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to say Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi may not have planted the bomb that brought down the 747, killing 259 people on board and 11 more on the ground when debris rained down upon the Scottish countryside.

The Observer newspaper cites senior legal and intelligence officials who say the commission will conclude that he may have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice, and could be released from jail.

Al-Megrahi's defense team raised concerns over the testimony of expert witnesses and evidence never aired at trial.

"'Contradictory forensic evidence' and 'hundreds of inconsistencies,'" are the basis for the ruling, according to Miller.

The report will go the Scottish High Court, which could uphold al-Megrahi's conviction, but sources say the weight of evidence that went into the commission's findings make it more likely that either the conviction will be thrown out or a new trial will be ordered.

Some have claimed that al-Megrahi was framed in a bid to get a conviction in the high-profile terrorism case.

The Observer quoted one legal source who has reviewed the evidence put together by al-Megrahi's legal team as saying, "The case was flaky and you only had to shake it a bit for it to start falling apart. A steamroller has been taken to it."

The commission's 500-page report names several individuals whom lawyers believe should have stood trial instead of al-Megrahi. They include Mohammed Abu Talb, a convicted Palestinian terrorist who was a member of the Syrian-led and Iranian-funded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.