Megrahi sneakily refuses to die on schedule

[The following are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Sunday Telegraph, headlined Lockerbie bomber Megrahi living in luxury villa six months after being at 'death's door'.]

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August.

Professor Karol Sikora, the London-based doctor who examined Megrahi and predicted he would be dead by last October, admitted this weekend that the fact the bomber is still alive might be "difficult" for the families of the 270 victims of the attack. (...)

The life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time [three months], or less, to live. [RB: There is no rule of law to this effect in Scotland: it is the normal -- but not invariable -- practice.] (...)

One leading prostate cancer specialist cast serious doubt yesterday on the wisdom of predicting that Megrahi had only three months to live – when a patient still had to undergo chemotherapy. Dr Chris Parker said it was extremely difficult to give an accurate prognosis for individual patients. "Studies show experts are very poor at trying to predict how long an individual patient will live for," he warned.

Megrahi received the chemotherapy drug Docetaxel – trade name Taxotere – shortly after returning to Libya.

Dr Parker, who is with the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, said: "The average prognosis for survival after Docetaxel would be 12 months.

"It can vary enormously but it would be very unusual to live beyond two years." (...)

Megrahi, is now living in a spacious two-storey villa with his wife and their five grown-up children in a prosperous suburb of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. (...)

Prof Sikora, one of the examining doctors who was paid a consultancy fee last July to examine Megrahi, told The Sunday Telegraph this weekend: "My information from Tripoli is that it's not going to be long [before Megrahi dies].

"They stopped any active treatment in December and he has just been going downhill very slowly at home. He is on high doses of morphine [a painkiller] and it's any day now."

Prof Sikora said that he suspected that Megrahi was still alive because he had received a "psychological" boost from returning to his homeland and being reunited with his family.

"It's stimulated him to have a remarkable [short-term] recovery," he said. "It's difficult. The choice offered by the letter of the law was either three months to live, or nothing. You couldn't have a sliding scale."

Some prostate cancer patients have lived for years longer that their doctors predicted.

Prof Sikora said it was just possible that Megrahi would be alive in several years time but added: "It's highly unlikely. There is a 90 per cent chance he will die in the next few weeks.

"He is relatively young and has very aggressive, fast-moving disease."

Megrahi has always denied any involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. He withdrew his second appeal against conviction just two days before he was allowed to return to Libya.

Those close to him say he did so reluctantly because he was convinced it would improve his chances of being freed from a Scottish jail.

Megrahi could have been released on compassionate grounds without dropping his appeal – but he could not have been freed under a prisoner exchange programme if legal action was ongoing.

Until the last moment, the authorities made it clear they were considering both options.

Professor Sikora had a message to the relatives of the Lockerbie tragedy who are angered by Megrahi's release: "The quality of his life is not good – he is a dying man.

"Quite frankly, as an act of mercy, it is better that he dies at home rather than in prison."