Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi should hear close-up Americans' outrage over his country's response to Scotland's release of former Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. Gadhafi's visit to New York City next month to speak at the United Nations will provide that opportunity.

Al-Megrahi had served only eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence for his involvement in the Pan Am Flight 103 tragedy when he was released Aug. 20. Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members on board, plus 11 people on the ground.

Scotland released al-Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Officials there said they were bound by Scottish rules of compassion to release him.

Consider: It was not until April 5, 1999 — 10 years after the bombing — that al-Megrahi was handed over by Gadhafi to Scottish police. That was more than seven years after al-Megrahi, who also was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, was indicted for murder following a three-year joint investigation by Britain and the FBI.

Libya's resistance to handing over al-Megrahi was testimony to Gadhafi's concurrence with the 1988 terrorist act and his lack of concern about world opinion. Now, with al-Megrahi's release, Gadhafi has added further insult to Flight 103 victims, their families and the United States by failing to ensure that al-Megrahi's return to Libya would be done quietly — without a hero's welcome.

Not only was al-Megrahi greeted by a cheering crowd, but with him on his arrival was Saif al-Islam el-Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader, in defiance of a warning from U.S. President Barack Obama, who cautioned against a hero's welcome.

Gadhafi, who still condones terrorism, deserves no ovation — nor cordial greeting — when he addresses the United Nations.

As for al-Megrahi, a person responsible for such an evil act deserved no compassion, even if it's true that he is expected to live fewer than three months.

Thoughts of compassion were forgotten when an autopsy revealed the horror that some of those aboard the doomed plane likely experienced.

Forensic pathologist Dr. William G. Eckert said after examining autopsy evidence that he believed the flight crew and some of the flight attendants, along with 147 other passengers, survived the bomb blast and depressurization of the aircraft and might have been alive on impact.

His observation was based on the fact that none of those people showed signs of injury from the explosion, or from the decompression and disintegration of the plane.

An inquest stemming from the crash heard that a flight attendant was alive when found by a farmer's wife, but died before help could arrive.

The plane was at its 31,000-feet cruising altitude when the explosion occurred, and it subsequently was estimated that the fall to earth lasted approximately two minutes.

According to forensic examiners, although some of the passengers would have lost consciousness initially due to lack of oxygen, some might have regained consciousness as they were falling through oxygen-rich lower altitudes.

For those people, their experience was one of unimaginable horror.

Yet Libyans regarded al-Megrahi's release as cause for celebration, with no regard for the bombing victims.

It was not until Aug. 16, 2003, that Libya formally admitted responsibility for Flight 103, but, according to the New York Times, the letter delivered to the president of the United Nations Security Council "lacked any expression of remorse."

Susan Cohen, whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, died in the Flight 103 bombing, has aptly described al-Megrahi's release as "a triumph for terrorism."

Most of the passengers aboard Flight 103 were Americans, and all Americans have cause for outrage over Scottish officials' misplaced compassion.

Al-Megrahi should have been kept in prison to die. His release only has enlarged the tragedy of that December day 20 years ago.