It was a little fishy last year when the Libyan terrorist convicted of killing 270 people — mostly Americans — in an airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, was released from a Scottish prison on “humanitarian grounds.” The terrorist, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, supposedly had terminal cancer, and he received a disgusting hero’s welcome back in Libya after his release.
But as it turns out, al-Megrahi’s condition is not so “terminal” after all. He has blocked the release of his medical records, and a doctor now says he could live 10 years more. Meanwhile, he recently celebrated his 58th birthday in a Libyan mansion and is reportedly working on a TV documentary designed to prove his “innocence.”
Even more disturbing is a report in the London Sunday Telegraph that the Libyan government, under dictator Moammar Gadhafi, paid for the medical assessment that led to al-Megrahi’s being turned loose. That has led some in the U.S. Senate to demand that Scotland investigate the circumstances surrounding al-Megrahi’s release.
There are “suspicions as to whether there was a rotten deal between the United Kingdom and the Libya government,” U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Britain’s ambassador to the United States. “So we’re calling on the State Department to put a full-court press on the United Kingdom to return this terrorist to prison.”
The State Department is equally disgusted by the questionable “diagnosis.”
“Every day that (al-Megrahi) lives as a free man, we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.
We agree.