EXCLUSIVE: Lucy Adams talks to the family of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is dying in a Scottish prison
All Motasem al Megrahi wants is for his father to drive him to school. It is a simple wish from an 11-year-old, but one which is unlikely to come true, because his father is serving a life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. He has been granted leave for a fresh appeal, but is suffering from terminal cancer.
Motasem, 11, was just four months old when Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was taken away from their whitewashed family home in Tripoli and extradited to a specially convened court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
Now, climbing over the arm of the sofa in their family home in Newton Mearns, outside Glasgow, he says he wants his father to come home.
"I just want him to be able to drive me to school," he explains in Arabic, having already forgotten much of the English learned at nursery school in East Renfrewshire in 2002. "When I am older, perhaps I would like him to teach me to drive too."
For a boy whose only memories are of a father in prison, Motasem seems remarkably calm. Despite spending nine of their formative years growing up without their father, the five children of the man convicted of the bombing are all surprisingly gracious and open.
As our photographs are taken, Motasem and his elder sister playfight together in a universal symbol of healthy sibling relations.
There are 14 years' difference between eldest daughter and youngest son. They have spent months, sometimes years, living in different continents because of the circumstances of their family life, yet they are close and protective of each other.
The years of their father's imprisonment and recent news that he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer seem to have brought them closer together.
Khalid, 22, has much clearer memories of his father but, as the eldest son, he has had to bear the burden of paternal responsibility.
"I was in primary school when my father had to leave," he says. "It was the first time I had seen my father cry. My brothers were too young to really understand what was going on.
"My mother became father and mother and she asked me to help to advise my brothers. I became like the man of the house."
It is a role he has taken seriously and, even here in the lounge of their modern family home, his mother Aisha looks to him for support.
As she talks, he stands behind her. When she tires of discussing the case, he takes her place on the sofa, his manners and film star looks curiously disarming.
"I remember when I was younger and he used to take us to a farm to see all the animals," he says, smiling at the memory, his English fluent and without hint of an accent.
"He loved going out to the country and going for long walks. He would take the whole family on walks and loved staying out there in a cottage in the country.
"I feel so sorry for Motesam because he does not even know what it is to have a father. My dad always supports me. He says I have to be the good example for my other brothers.
"I don't feel angry about what has happened. I just feel so sad. I only have one wish and that is that he comes home. We forget how it was when he lived with us."
Each of the five siblings speaks English to a different level, an illustration of the disjointed lives they have led since their father was placed under house arrest in Tripoli in 1991.
After Megrahi's appeal was rejected at Camp Zeist in 2002, the family took the decision to move to Newton Mearns to be closer to him. It was not an easy choice, and meant leaving behind their friends, family and lifestyle.
Khalid is now the only member of the family living permanently in Newton Mearns. The original visas for the family ran out in 2003 and now they can spend only short periods in Scotland.
Khalid is here on a student visa while he finishes his four-year course in IT at college in Glasgow.
"It is really difficult to explain to anybody here about my family history. To my friends, I am just another student. It is too difficult to tell people.
"And I still find the Scots accent difficult to understand. I'm here because I wanted to stay and study, but also because I wanted to be close to my father. Back in Tripoli, I have so much more of a life. Here I just go from studying to coming home and then back to studying."
He will spend the festive holidays on his own as the remainder of the family have to fly home to Tripoli.
"It has become like a routine," he says, explaining how he copes spending time alone. "At times, like Christmas and other holidays, it can be boring because the rest of the family are often in Tripoli. My friends at college are mainly from overseas rather than Scottish."
It is, he says, the little things he misses most but, although frustrated with the delays in his father's appeal, he is not angry.
"When I learned to drive here I wanted my dad to be there sitting next to me," he says. "I don't know from where the fault came: I just know that someone innocent was put away. We feel sorry for those who lost relatives, but my father is innocent.
"I don't know the future any more. I still believe that one day justice will be done. We were so happy for Fhimah when he was acquitted because he has children who were in the same situation as us.
"I don't understand why the appeal is moving so slowly. I hear about it in the news. We need justice. We have come so far. We have always tried to believe in the Scottish justice system and don't want to be let down now. Everyone in Libya believes my father is innocent and I think many people here do too. Many don't even realise he is still in jail - it has been so long.
"I just want him to be able to come home. We could support him. Maybe I could even take him to see the Scottish countryside."
Of the five children, it is only Ali, 14, who seems genuinely angry about the circumstances of his father's incarceration. He also refuses to have photographs taken.
"If all these people think he is innocent, why is he still in prison?" he asks in Arabic.
The family try to explain the legal process to him as his questions are translated. "I don't like it here, because I don't understand why my father is still in prison. The fact the legal process is so slow is not my father's fault.
"I just want him to get out. I want to be a lawyer when I'm older. I will help people like my dad."
The children's bond with Scotland is understandably limited by the circumstances in which they have lived here, but there are still aspects of the British lifestyle they have grown to cherish.
"If we had to leave Scotland and not come back, I would miss some things," says Mohamed, 16, the second oldest son, who speaks English as fluently as Khalid and is as softly spoken. "I would miss Asda and Tesco. Right now though I miss my father."
He offers to help teach us Arabic and responds with encouragement to our poor first attempts.
"When I arrived, I spoke no English at all," he says. "Everything was so different. At the school, I remember some of the families were not at all sympathetic. The teachers never spoke about it. It is not easy to be here.
"If he my father showed up at the door, I would slap myself. I would think it was a dream come true. I don't really remember him from when I was young. Only when I see photos I remember."
Like her mother, Ghada, 25, Megrahi's eldest child, wears a soft black headscarf. Her clothes are simple and demure but, in contrast to Aisha, Ghada's views are far more strident.
"When my father heard the news he was to be indicted, he was so distraught," she says. "We had to hear it on the news with all the other people. At that time, a lot of our friends and people in Libya tried to distance themselves from us because of the fear of being accused of being associated with us. It was not because they did not like us, but simply the sheer fear. We were completely isolated from the rest of the community and unable to go to any social functions.
"When I was at school, the other children would point at me and would not speak to me, but now the situation has changed completely as everyone there believes he is innocent.
"During that time we were isolated, aspects of the case became clearer and we were able to explain that to friends."
As the eldest child and only daughter of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, she explains that it has not been easy. The years of legal wrangling have also driven her on to become a lawyer.
"I want to go into law because of what happened to my father and people like him who are wrongly accused," she says.
"I've finished my undergraduate law course and now want to do a postgraduate. I studied here for three years while my husband, Mohamed, was studying at Glasgow Caledonian University. We met at Tripoli University in the school of law. He recognised that my father was innocent.
"We try to come over to Scotland at least three times a year to visit dad, but we are only allowed to see him for half-an-hour a week.
"Now the visits to him leave him visibly exhausted. He can barely stand and is in pain when he walks. He finds it very stressful, but is still strong in his belief that he will be released and proven innocent because he is very courageous."
As the only daughter, Ghada suffered the ignominy of being married in prison to ensure her father could be part of the ceremony. "I did not have the happiness a bride should have on their wedding day," she says.
"I could not even manage a smile because I wanted my father to be able to leave the prison to be part of the wedding party. My two sons have only known a grandfather in prison.
"Growing up with all of this has affected my psychology greatly, and my studies and my social life."
For their two sons, Loui, four, and Soud, two, there is little interaction with their grandfather. They have visited him in prison, but do not understand why they can not not see him more often, and barely remember what he looks like.
"When the judges refused my father's request for interim bail last month, lots of people and relatives came to visit us in Tripoli to express their support," Ghada explains.
"My elder son saw my uncle - my father's brother - and started shouting: Grandad has come home. Grandad has come home.' That affected me a lot."
Before leaving with her husband to fly back to Libya, she embraces each family member individually and then delivers a parting missive: "Please bring my dad home."
