Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, was found in Libya's capital of Tripoli and in coma, U.S. media reports said on Sunday.

A man, identified as al-Megrahi's son, said that he had stopped eating and was close to death, according to the CNN reports.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, which claimed 259 victims. He was released in 2009 on humanitarian grounds, as he had been given only weeks to live due to cancer.

His release had caused controversy in the west because families of those killed in the bombing were outraged when some reports in the past said al-Megrahi could survive perhaps another decade.