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“Ministers gave Libya legal advice on how to free Lockerbie bomber,” headlines the Daily Telegraph. According to documents passed on to the London daily by WikiLeaks, British government ministers secretly advised Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime how to secure the successful early release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in 2009. “A Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to use Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds”, the London daily reveals. Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland in 2001 for the murder of the 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. Writes the Telegraph, “The disclosure seriously undermines British Government claims that is was not complicit in the release of al-Megrahi, and that the decision to free the convicted terrorist was taken by the Scottish Executive alone.” It is strongly suspected that the release was tied to lucrative oil deals between the UK and Libya.
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