The judges considering the appeal by the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will deliver their verdict next Thursday, it was announced today.
They have been urged by the defence team for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi to declare the original murder trial a "miscarriage of justice".
During the appeal, the five judges heard defence claims that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am flight 103 on December 21st 1988, killing 170 people, could have been smuggled aboard at Heathrow.
At the end of the original trial last year, former Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi was jailed for life for murder after being found guilty of planting the bomb on a Frankfurt-bound flight at Malta Airport where he worked.
The three trial judges accepted the prosecution case that the suitcase bomb was transferred at Frankfurt to the Pan Am flight, destined for New York via Heathrow.
But the appeal heard about a security breach at Heathrow in which locked doors separating the "landside" passenger check-in lounge from the restricted "airside" baggage handling area in Terminal Three were forced and a padlock broken off.
The incident was logged by airport security staff soon after midnight on December 21st, 1988, about 19 hours before Pan Am flight 103 took off from the same terminal.
Mr William Taylor QC, defending Megrahi, said the new evidence raised "strong circumstantial evidence" the bomb could have been placed on the aircraft at Heathrow, instead of via a flight originating at Malta Airport.
But Mr Alan Turnbull QC, for the prosecution, urged the judges to reject the appeal, insisting it was just another example of the "speculative explanations" the defence had put forward at the original trial.
PA