The Scottish government has vowed to continue an investigation into the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, even though the only person convicted in the case has died.

First Minister Alex Salmond said Sunday investigators still believe Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- whose death in Libya was confirmed by his son Sunday -- didn't act alone in blowing up Pan AM Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The former Libyan intelligence officer reportedly died at his home in Tripoli at age 60.

Al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison in 2009 on humanitarian grounds, a move that enraged the U.S. government and the families of those who died.

In a statement, Salmond said he still believed his country did the right thing by releasing al-Megrahi, who received a hero's welcome in Tripoli when former dictator Moammar Gadhafi was still in power.

At the time, doctors had said al-Megrahi only had three months to live after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Anger erupted not only because al-Megrahi was released, but also by allegations that London had sought his release to preserve business in the oil-rich North African nation.

Al-Megrahi insisted he was innocent, but he kept a strict silence after his release, living in the family villa surrounded by high walls in a posh Tripoli neighbourhood, mostly bedridden or taking a few steps with a cane.

"I am an innocent man," al-Megrahi said in his last interview, published in several British papers in December. "I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family."

A spokesperson for some British families who lost loved ones in the bombing said he always believed al-Megrahi was innocent too.

The father of one of the Lockerbie victims said al-Megrahi's death was "to a degree a relief" and insisted that his 2009 release from jail was done for political reasons.

"If he had been that bad three years ago, he wouldn't have lived this long. It was a political deal," said Glenn Johnson of Greensburg, Pa., whose 21-year-old daughter Beth Ann Johnson was killed in the bombing.

The U.S., Britain, and prosecutors in his trial argued that he did not act alone and carried out the bombing on the orders of Libyan intelligence.

After Gadhafi's death, Britain asked Libya's new rulers to help investigate but they put off any probe.

They also rejected Western pressure to jail or return al-Megrahi.

To Libyans, he was a folk hero, an innocent scapegoat used by the West to turn their country into a pariah.

The regime presented his handover to Scotland in 1999 as a necessary sacrifice to restore Libya's relations with the world.

But in the eyes of many Americans and Europeans, he was the foot-soldier carrying out orders from Gadhafi's regime.

The Lockerbie, Scotland bombing is considered to be one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern history.

The flight was heading to New York from London's Heathrow airport and many of the victims were American college students flying home to for Christmas.

Gadhafi handed over al-Megrahi and a second suspect to Scottish authorities after years of punishing UN sanctions.

Four years later, in 2003, Gadhafi acknowledged responsibility -- though not guilt -- for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation of about $2.7 billion to the Lockerbie victims' families.

He also pledged to dismantle all weapons of mass destruction and joined the U.S.-led war on terror.

In 2001, a Scottish court -- set up in the neutral ground of a military base in the Netherlands -- convicted al-Megrahi of planting the bomb but acquitted his co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, a Libyan Arab Airlines official, of all charges.

Al-Megrahi ended up serving eight years of a life sentence.

Saad Nasser al-Megrahi, a relative and a member of the ruling National Transitional Council, said al-Megrahi's health had deteriorated in recent days and he died of cancer-related complications.

He is survived by his wife, Aisha, and five children.