With the death on Sunday of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, the victims’ families and the world runs the risk of the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing going to the grave with him.

The man died protesting his innocence, despite having dropped a planned appeal against his conviction so as to clear the way for his release and return to Libya under Scottish law, which grants compassionate release for the terminally ill.

That, were it to come to pass, would also be a gross injustice to Malta, whose good name has been indelibly tarnished over these last 23 years as the point of departure of the lethal luggage that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people.

Al-Megrahi, some say, was Lockerbie’s 271st victim but that will perhaps never be ascertained beyond any reasonable doubt unless a fully-fledged inquiry into the case is carried out on the basis of findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which found enough evidence to grant al-Megrahi his appeal, and new evidence that has surfaced since then.

Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law over its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 23 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb responsible for one of the most heinous terrorist acts in history began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa Airport.

Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of a separate inquiry into the case.

Evidence presented during the trial that the bomb, it has been said time and time again, had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings, and Malta has a good case to bring to the European Union for such an enquiry.

Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its alleged role in the tragedy, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an investigation that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear out the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.

The government, however, has in the past brushed the concept aside for reasons that remain unclear.

Al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.

There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known.

Perhaps it is up to Malta, which has found itself right in the middle of the controversy for over two decades now and through no fault of its own, to find a way to force that truth to come out.

The Lockerbie tragedy has left an indelible stain on Malta’s reputation – a stain that will remain, irrespective of whether an inquiry into the Lockerbie case and the evidence that was to be heard at appeal is undertaken, and regardless of what the outcome of such an enquiry would be.

Malta, for many, will always be the place from where the Lockerbie bomb started its fateful journey, and the country should seek the ways and means with which to clear its name.

With al-Megrahi, the world is still very much split on whether it was a case of justice served or justice denied. It is only an inquiry that could, perhaps, allow al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie victims, and the truth to rest in peace.