BREAKING NEWS

Scottish Politician defends release of Lockerbie bomber

By JPOST.COM STAFF, ASSOCIATED PRESS

JULY 21, 2010 17:43

Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, spoke on Wednesday in response to conspiracy claims over the decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.

Following comments made by British Prime Minister David Cameron and US Presient Barack Obama on the subject earlier in the week, Salmond told BBC Radio 4: '...we had no contact with BP either written or verbal, as far as the process of compassionate release was concerned.'

Al-Megrahi was convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, most of them American. The Scottish government released the cancer-stricken man on compassionate grounds last year, igniting outrage on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bringing the matter to the fore again were accusations that BP sought the release of the convicted bomber as part of efforts to seek access to Libyan oil fields; BP has acknowledged that it urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya but says it never specified al-Megrahi's case.

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