Libya bid to transfer Lockerbie bomber

John Thorne, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 15. 2009 4:02PM UAE / May 15. 2009 12:02PM GMT

Aisha Al Megrahi, wife of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset Ali Mohmet al Megrah, protests his innocence while on a demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh last year. Her husband is now striken with terminal prostate cancer. Andy Buchanan / AFP Photo

RABAT // From his cell in a Scottish prison, a former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of blowing up a passenger plane in mid-air is preparing for his own final journey.

In 2001, Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was found guilty of helping bomb Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in Dec 1988, killing 270. Now Libya is asking that Megrahi, stricken with terminal prostate cancer, be allowed home to die.

To some, that looks too much like clemency for a man allegedly behind Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack. It also threatens to complicate an appeal launched last month by Megrahi, who maintains his innocence. For the western governments who helped put him behind bars, Megrahi’s fate remains a factor in their quest to cultivate relations with Libya.

Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 en route from London to New York, had just reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 feet when a bomb in the hold punched through the fuselage, severing the cockpit. Within seconds, shock waves had torn the plane apart, the pieces crashing to earth around the Dumfriesshire town of Lockerbie. All 243 passengers and 16 crew were killed as well as 11 people on the ground.

An investigation by Scottish police and the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation pointed to Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, a station chief for Libyan Arab Airlines, and Megrahi.

After seizing power in 1969, Libya’s leader Muammer Qadafi helped train and bankroll a rogues’ gallery of militant groups and liberation movements. Some, like the Palestinian group Black September, carried out terrorist attacks, while rebel leaders such as Liberia’s Charles Taylor spread murder and mayhem through corners of the Third World.

These kinds of antics antagonised western countries, including the United States and Great Britain, both of which had cut relations with Libya by the time of the Lockerbie bombing. By the end of the 1990s, beset with UN and US sanctions, Mr Qadafi wanted in from the cold.

In 1999, Libya delivered the Lockerbie suspects to stand trial before a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands, which acquitted Mr Fhimah but sentenced Megrahi to life in prison with a minimum of 27 years. Meanwhile, Libya began secret talks with the United States and repaired ties with Britain.

“Relations developed quite quickly,” said Sir Richard Dalton, posted to Libya in 1999 as Britain’s first ambassador in 15 years and currently an analyst with Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London. “The Libyans were acting responsibly and had fulfilled their obligations in the case of the Lockerbie incident.”

Rapprochement has seen Libya pay US$2.7 billion (Dh9.9bn) to the families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing and renounce attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon. UN and US sanctions have been lifted, and a US Embassy reopened in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

Last month, Libya and Britain ratified a prisoner transfer deal worked out in 2007 by Tony Blair, the then prime minister, during a visit to Tripoli. Now Libya wants Megrahi to be sent home under the agreement’s terms.

“The Libyans have maintained that Megrahi is innocent, and on humanitarian grounds they’d like to see him restored to his family in Libya,” Sir Richard said.

The move is likely to win applause for their government from ordinary Libyans, said Ronald Bruce St John, a Libya expert and analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank that is part of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

“There’s considerable support in Libya for the argument that the government was not involved in Lockerbie.”

However, Tripoli’s request leaves Megrahi in a bind. If he goes home, he will have to drop his current attempt to appeal his conviction. If he stays to fight his case, he may die before its conclusion.

The affair has caused a stir in Britain, where Scottish politicians have voiced dismay at the prospect of Megrahi being turned loose. Some families of Lockerbie victims believe he may be innocent, but others want him to stay in Scottish custody.

“We want the appeal to go through because it’s the main means of us getting further information about how our family members died or why they died,” said Barrie Berkley, an Englishman whose son Alistair was killed in the bombing, quoted by the BBC.

A decision by the Scottish authorities to keep Megrahi would not seriously derail Britain’s relations with Libya, said Sir Richard. “But there would be consequences.”

Among them is the possibility that a successful appeal by Megrahi would plunge Britain, the US and Libya once again into the fraught environment of an international investigation to find new Lockerbie suspects, Sir Richard said.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in London said Washington wanted Megrahi to remain in Scottish hands, while Britain’s foreign office declined to comment on the affair.

The UK-Libya prisoner transfer deal does not necessarily apply to Megrahi. His case is currently being examined by the Scottish authorities, said Fiona Wilson, a spokeswoman for Scotland’s devolved government.

“You have to look at Lockerbie as the last remaining unpleasantness between Britain and Libya,” Dr St John said. “They’d like to get it off the table.”

jthorne@thenational.ae