[What follows is taken from an item just posted on the CNN Press Room blog. It features a photograph of Megrahi lying in bed with his mother sitting beside him:]
CNN's Nic Robertson has been looking for the man convicted of the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, and tracked him down today in Libya.
Libya's National Transitional Council announced Sunday it will not extradite Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing. The NTC justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi insisting that "We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West." Megrahi may be the last man alive who knows precisely who in the Libya government authorized that bombing. [RB: Alternatively, having had nothing to do with the bombing, he may not.]
Interesting listening to Tom Harris (Glasgow South Labour MP -and possible successor to Iain Gray) on tonight's BBC R4 Westminster Hour - he agrees that Megrahi was released under due legal process, and shouldn't be returned from Libya therefore, but doesn't believe he should have been released in the first place...which sounds a bit like having it both ways. Least he stayed and answered the questions unlike Iain Gray who walks away from the interview (since he can't take his tram :)) when asked difficult questions...that's how Labour handle things in Scotland, after all, under his leadership.
ReplyDeleteAccording to The Telegraph:
ReplyDelete"Reporters discovered Megrahi lying comatose and surviving on an intravenous drip in a room in his family's palatial villa.
"Relatives said that he was close to death and insisted that they were being given no help from the Gaddafi regime amid the fall of the capital.
"His son, Khaled Elmegarhi, told CNN: 'We just give him oxygen. Nobody gives us any advice. There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don't have any phone line to call anybody'."
Wow, CNN tracked him down.....to his house! I can just see the investigation team, "OK guys,this is his family home. He's hiding somewhere in this war-torn, God-forsaken country but we've got to start somewhere. Its gonna be a long, dangerous week!" knock knock. "come in, he's in his bed, dying."
ReplyDeleteBeing found in his family home means that he wasn't 'in hiding' somewhere. It also means that he wasn't being actively sought by the US government, contrary to suspicions.
ReplyDeleteI am short of words.
ReplyDelete