Justice Secretary under fire as bomber defies three-month prognosis

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

Three months after he was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government, the Lockerbie bomber continues to defy predictions about the likely course of his illness.

When, on August 20, Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary announced that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, he suggested that he had about three months left to live.

Yesterday, however, al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted over the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 atrocity, which claimed 270 lives, was still fighting the illness in a Libyan hospital. The 12-week time span is crucial because only prisoners expected to survive three months or less are eligible for compassionate release.

Last night Mr MacAskill was under pressure again as victims’ relatives questioned his decision, and said they felt “hurt and betrayed”.

The Times understands that al-Megrahi remains a patient at the Tripoli Medical Centre, where he was admitted about ten days after he returned to Libya. Although sources were not able to say how ill he is, his family suggested that his prognosis was poor. His elder brother, Mohammed, said he was unable to comment on his health but confirmed he was “still in hospital taking heavy treatments”.

A Libyan official said that al-Megrahi’s will to live was probably stronger “in the bosom of his family than in a prison cell”, but emphasised: “The outcome is not in any doubt.”

A prominent British cancer specialist, who asked not to be named, said, “no one should be remotely surprised” that the Lockerbie bomber was still alive. Three months was merely the average life expectancy of someone with prostate cancer as advanced as al-Megrahi’s, he said. Some patients would live longer while others would die sooner.

Al-Megrahi has not been seen in public since September 9, when he was briefly taken into a conference room inside the hospital to meet a delegation of African Union parliamentarians. He was in a wheelchair, coughed repeatedly and said nothing during his ten-minute appearance. Observers said he looked very frail. (...)

Tony Kelly, al-Megrahi’s lawyer in Scotland, refused to comment on his client’s health. Under the terms of release, East Renfrewshire Council receives a monthly report from al-Megrahi’s doctors, and its criminal justice officials speak to him periodically by video link or telephone, but a council spokesman refused to discuss the bomber’s health.

Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, which represents US families, said he was not surprised that al-Megrahi lives on.

“We never believed he was as sick as he said he was,” he said. “They had been saying for over a year he had one foot in the grave.”

He said the families felt “hurt and betrayed” by the Scottish government and claimed that the Libyan’s survival would intensify those feelings.

Pamela Dix, of Woking, Surrey, whose brother Peter was killed in the attack, urged the authorities to provide more information about al-Megrahi’s condition. She said that speculation over his condition could detract from their efforts to force a public inquiry into the Lockerbie affair.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish government said: “The Justice Secretary made his decision taking into account a report dated August 10 from the Director of Health and Care for the Scottish Prison Service which indicated that a three-month prognosis was then a reasonable estimate.”

• Campaigners including Noam Chomsky and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have sent an open letter to the United Nations, calling for an extensive UN-run public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing. The letter, addressed to the President of the General Assembly of the UN, says that the decision by al-Megrahi to drop his appeal before being freed on compassionate grounds ended “one of the last best hopes” of discovering the truth about the tragedy.