Letters show terrorist released for Libya oil deal

Sunday Times:

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “This is the strongest evidence yet that the British government has been involved for a long time in talks over al-Megrahi in which commercial considerations have been central to their thinking.”

Two letters dated five months apart show that Straw initially intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, under which British and Libyan prisoners could serve out their sentences in their home country.

In a letter dated July 26, 2007, Straw said he favoured an option to leave out Megrahi by stipulating that any prisoners convicted before a specified date would not be considered for transfer.

Downing Street had also said Megrahi would not be included under the agreement.

Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included.

...

It appears that justice is for sell in the UK. This will make this inexplicable release of a mass murderer even harder on the victims' families as well as those who pursue justice against terrorist. The British government should be ashamed.

That is probably why the PM made a surprise trip to Afghanistan to change the subject. Regardless of how much we appreciate their efforts in Afghanistan, it does not make the release of a terrorist for an oil deal right.

Comments

  1. Beware. This story is being aggressively front-loaded in the British media with the accent firmly on the oil-for-release deals, in order to smack an increasingly unpopular government a year away from a general election they will probably lose. Nothing so very wrong in that, as it probably matches the temper of the U.K. population re the Labour administration (and "ALL politicians") right now.

    However, it simultaneously takes attention from the OTHER deals that were cut (by the UK and the US among others) at the beginning of this whole business: arrangements that many would argue put Libya in the frame for a crime that was more likely the work of Syria and Iran, and which made the verdict itself rather suspect (it is widely believed Megrahi's appeal would have succeeded and a miscarriage of justice verdict would have been handed down).

    If people accept national self-interest was a motive for the release of Megrahi, why are they so reluctant to acknowledge that it could have been behind his conviction in the first place?

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  2. this realy bad thing for everyone.........


    Property Koncepts

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