Scottish first minister defends Lockerbie release

THE head of Scotland’s government has said that FBI director Robert Mueller was wrong to criticise the decision to free the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber – insisting there was public support for the release on compassionate grounds.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing, was released on Thursday because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. He has returned to his native Libya to die.

The release was met with outrage by families of the US victims of the bombing and criticised by US President Barack Obama as “highly objectionable”.

In a letter to Scotland’s government, Mueller said that al-Megrahi’s release would give comfort to terrorists all over the world.

“Your action,” he wrote, “makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988.” But Scottish first minister Alex Salmond told BBC Radio that Mueller was wrong in assuming that all those affected by the bombing were opposed to al-Megrahi’s release.

“I understand the huge and strongly held views of the American families, but that’s not all the families who were affected by Lockerbie,” Salmond said.

“As you’re well aware, a number of the families, particularly in the UK, take a different view and think we made the right decision.”

The explosion of a bomb hidden in the cargo hold of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed all 259 onboard and 11 on the ground in Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Some bereaved relatives in Britain dispute al-Megrahi’s 2001 conviction, and a 2007 Scottish judicial review of his case found grounds for an appeal. He was convicted largely on the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper, who identified al-Megrahi as having bought a shirt – scraps of which were later found wrapped around the bomb.

Al-Megrahi has maintained his innocence, but last week dropped his appeal so that he could be released on compassionate grounds.

Both the British and Scottish governments have denied that they struck a deal with Libya to free the Lockerbie bomber in return for greater access to the country’s oil and gas.

Libyan officials have claimed al-Megrahi’s fate had formed part of trade talks in recent years, while the country’s leader Moammar Gadhafi on Friday thanked British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth II for “encouraging the Scottish government” to take their decision – a claim denied by both Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.

Brown’s office insists that the government in London does not meddle in the work of Scotland’s administration – which has wide powers over domestic issues, but has no say in areas such as defence or foreign affairs.

“No one I think seriously believes we made any other decision except for the right reasons,” Salmond said. “I think it was the right decision. I also absolutely know it was for the right reasons.”

He said al-Megrahi’s release was consistent with Scotland’s legal system, which allows for the release of prison inmates who are terminally ill.