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”.