Bomber lawyers bid for his release
Lawyers for the Lockerbie bomber are to ask a court to free him on bail.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi applied for interim release from jail pending the outcome of an appeal against conviction.
Legal submissions from his defence team and Crown Office prosecutors will be heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.
The move comes after it emerged that the former Libyan intelligence agent, 56, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and the disease had spread to other parts of his body.
Scotland's Lord Justice General Lord Hamilton, Lord Kingarth and Lord Wheatley will preside over the hearing, which Al Megrahi is not expected to attend.
The Libyan is serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 27 years for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people.
In September he was taken from his prison cell in HMP Greenock under tight security to undergo tests at Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock.
Al Megrahi lost an appeal in 2002, but was given a fresh chance to clear his name in June last year when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred his case back to appeal judges for a second time.
In October he won a legal victory when judges ruled that his appeal could have a wide-ranging focus, looking beyond the issues raised by the SCCRC when it suggested he might have suffered a miscarriage of justice.
His second appeal is due to be heard next year.
