Scotland Lets Lockerbie Convict Return to Libya

Scotland Lets Lockerbie Convict Return to Libya
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/europe/21lockerbie.html?ref=global-home


LONDON — Despite strenuous American opposition, the Scottish government on Thursday ordered the release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, permitting Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent, to return home after serving 8 years of a 27-year minimum sentence on charges of murdering 270 people in Britain’s worst terrorist episode.

He qualified for compassionate release after medical evidence showed he would die within months of prostate cancer, the Scottish authorities said.

Within hours of the announcement television broadcasts showed Mr. Megrahi clambering from a white prison van and walking, hunched but unassisted, up the steps of an airplane from Libya’s Afriqiyah airline at Glasgow airport. He was wearing a white tracksuit and baseball cap and carried a cane.

The airplane lifted off less than two and a half hours after Scotland’s Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill opened a news conference to announce Mr. Megrahi’s release.

His freedom came almost 21 years after a bomb smuggled onto Pan Am Flight 103 exploded at 31,000 feet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

Of the dead, 189 were Americans. The Scottish decision was certain to provoke anguished protest from American families of the victims who had demanded that he serve his full sentence.

The White House said in a news release that it “deeply regrets” the Scottish decision. “We continue to believe that Megrahi should serve out his sentence in Scotland,” the statement said.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and one of seven senators to protest Mr. Megrahi’s early release, said in a statement that “the news today from Glasgow turned the word ’compassion’ on its head.”

He called the bombing “unforgivable,” adding: "Megrahi showed no compassion to the innocent passengers and Scottish villagers he murdered; he should not receive our compassion now. Justice is ill-served by his early release."

American relatives of the victims have been following developments in Mr. Megrahi’s case, and many had expressed anger in recent days over the possibility of his release. Denice Rein, whose husband Mark, the treasurer of Salomon Brothers, died in the bombing, said Wednesday that she wanted the medical records released and independently verified. She suggested he be moved to a jail in Libya. “I don’t think he should be free,” she said. “I think he should be jailed closer to home, so his loved ones can see him.”

Mr. MacAskill said it was his decision and his alone that Mr. Megrahi “be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die.”

“I have followed due process,” he said.

Mr. MacAskill acknowledged that Mr. Megrahi “did not show his victims any comfort or compassion” and that they were not allowed to go home to their families. “No compassion was shown by him to them,” he said. “But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him.”

He called the Lockerbie bombing a “heinous crime” in which the victims were “cruelly murdered.”

Mr. MacAskill said he had been asked to rule on two applications for Mr. Megrahi’s release — one relating to an agreement between Libya and Britain on the transfer of prisoners and one on compassionate grounds. He said he rejected an application by the Libyan government for a prisoner transfer after United States officials insisted that, when Mr. Megrahi was tried, they had been assured that he would serve his full term in Scotland.

He also criticized the British government for saying it had given no such assurance to the United States. “I find that highly regrettable,” he said.

He said Scottish law provided for release on compassionate grounds of prisoners with terminal illnesses whose life expectancy was less than three months.

After receiving medical reports from prison doctors and others, he said, it was clear that “he has a terminal illness, and recently there has been a significant deterioration in his health.”

“The three-month prognosis is a reasonable estimate,” Mr. MacAskill said. “He may die sooner. He may live longer.”

While he acknowledged that “the pain and suffering will remain forever” for the families of the victims, “our belief dictates that justice be served and mercy be shown.”

Mr. MacAskill said Mr. Megrahi could be leaving within an hour from Scotland’s Greenock prison, and transferred to Glasgow airport to be flown home. Television footage showed an Airbus with the marking “Afriqiyah” landing at Glasgow airport while a convoy of police cars and motorcycle outriders escorted an armored prison van carrying Mr. Megrahi.

“I am conscious there are deeply held feelings and that many will disagree whatever my decision,” Mr. MacAskill said. “However, a decision has to be made.”

“Scotland will forever remember the crime that has been perpetrated against our people and those from many other lands,” he said. “Some hurt can never heal, some scars can never fade. Those who have been bereaved cannot be expected to forget, let alone forgive. Their pain runs deep and the wounds remain,” he said.

A Scottish official who discussed the case said that Mr. MacAskill’s decision was bound to provoke anger either way. “Whatever decision you make, it’s going to upset some people,” he said, speaking anonymously on the grounds that he was not authorized to comment officially. He added, “There are a lot of representatives of U.K. families who lost relatives in the bombing who feel quite strongly that Megrahi should be released.”

In 2001 a special Scottish court that heard the case in the Netherlands found Mr. Megrahi guilty of murder and other offenses related to the bombing but acquitted another Libyan tried with him. Mr. Megrahi has never admitted his guilt, and he was engaged in a second appeal this year when doctors in Scotland diagnosed a terminal case of prostate cancer.

With his health weighing as a potentially decisive factor in the case, the Libyan government arranged for one of Britain’s top cancer specialists, Dr. Karol Sikora, to examine him in late July, together with a Libyan cancer specialist. On Wednesday, Dr. Sikora called for an urgent decision in the case, saying that Mr. Megrahi “has only a very short period of time to live.”

The decision Thursday followed days of legal and political maneuvering. Earlier this week, Mr. Megrahi’s lawyers petitioned successfully in a Scottish court to abandon his appeal of his 2001 conviction, which was due to resume in September. The appeal has hinged on the claim of Mr. Megrahi’s lawyers that he was wrongly identified at trial as the man who bought clothes in a shop in Malta that were used to wrap the bomb on board Pan Am 103.

A BBC report from Tripoli said authorities there were preparing a warm homecoming for Mr. Megrahi, who belongs to a powerful tribe that has been a political ally of Colonel Qaddafi.

But many American families that lost relatives in the bombing remained adamant in their opposition to the Libyan’s release.

“If this was bin Laden or one of bin Laden’s deputies sitting in jail, would we even be having this discussion? I don’t think so,” said Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband, Michael, was killed.

“I think this has to do with oil. I think this has to do with politics. And I don’t think this has anything to do with justice,” she said Wednesday.

Helen Engelhardt, whose husband, Tony Hawkins, was killed on the plane, said she wanted to hear more from Mr. Megrahi.

“I would like this fellow, before he breathes his last breath to tell us the story,” Ms. Engelhardt said Wednesday. “We need the truth. We need to know what really happened.”



John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris. A. G. Sulzberger contributed reporting from New York.