UK stressed Libya ties in Lockerbie letters

Slides
Photos

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-02 09:21

LONDON: In the years leading up to Scotland's release of the Lockerbie bomber, Britain repeatedly stressed the importance of growing UK-Libyan ties and said it did not want Abdel Baset al-Megrahi to die in prison, according to confidential documents released by the British and Scottish governments on Tuesday.

The British government released the documents in an attempt to quell speculation that it pushed al-Megrahi's release to boost economic cooperation with Libya. But the documents will likely fan more resentment in the United States, where al-Megrahi's release has been vehemently opposed.

Al-Megrahi, 57, was convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people - many of whom were American college students. Scotland freed him on compassionate grounds August 20 after doctors said he had three months to live due to advanced prostate cancer.

Britain has regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that are responsible for local issues but retains power over foreign policy.

"You ask what I mean by 'national interests,"' Britain's Justice Secretary Jack Straw said in a letter last year to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

"Developing a strong relationship with Libya, and helping it to reintegrate into the international community, is good for the UK. Libya is one of only two countries to have ever voluntarily and transparently dismantled its weapons of mass destruction program. Having sponsored terrorist attacks in the past, it is now an important partner in the fight against terrorism."

Straw had originally written to Scottish authorities a year before saying there might be a way to exclude al-Megrahi from a potential prisoner transfer agreement - an exclusion that could have appeased the Americans and eliminated one way that al-Megrahi could have been freed.

It was unclear what prompted Straw to change his mind.

"I do not believe that it is necessary, or sensible, to risk damaging our wide ranging and beneficial relationship with Libya by inserting a specific exclusion into the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement)," Straw wrote in the 2008 letter to Salmond.

US Justice Department spokesman Richard Kolko responded to the document disclosure, saying that his department had "received assurances in the 1990's that al-Megrahi's full sentence would be served in Scotland."

The statement seemed to contradict other documents, including one from Britain's Foreign Office that said there was no categorical commitment given to the United States to keep al-Megrahi jailed.

In an August 3, 2009, letter, Ivan Lewis, Britain's Middle East minister, told Scottish Attorney General Kenny MacAskill that "while the US pressed the UK to provide a definitive commitment on the future imprisonment" of al-Megrahi, Britain "declined to do this on the grounds that it did not wish to bind the hands of future governments."

Lewis said he hoped Scotland would feel able to consider Megrahi's application for a return to Libya, adding that at the time of al-Megrahi's 2001 conviction, ministers could "not rule out the possibility that our relations with Libya may one day change, as indeed they have."

In a second letter, sent to Scottish government official George Burgess in July, the Foreign Office told him Britain "did not give the US an absolute commitment" to keep al-Megrahi jailed in Scotland.

The exchanges also raise questions on whether Britain warned Scotland of a possible diplomatic fallout with the United States should al-Megrahi be released.

Previous page 1 2 Next Page