BP boss to testify on role in release of Lockerbie bomber

BP CHIEF executive Tony Hayward has been asked to testify before a US Senate committee about the oil giant’s role in Scotland’s decision to release the Lockerbie aeroplane bomber, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

Senator Robert Menendez said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hoped to clarify whether BP had a hand in a decision last year by the Scottish government to release cancer-stricken Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

A source familiar with the matter said BP advisor Mark Allen also has been asked to appear before the committee.

Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, 58, had as little as three months to live, the Libyan national is still alive nearly a year after his August 2009 release.

“For our national security and for fundamental justice, we need answers about the circumstances of this convicted terrorist’s release, and we intend to get answers at this hearing,” Menendez said in a statement.

“The more it seems that this was a miscarriage of justice, the more it emboldens would-be terrorists who realise they can get away with murder,” said the lawmaker, who represents the north-eastern state of New Jersey.

“The more it seems like a rigged decision, the bigger an insult it is” to those who perished in the crash, the senator said, adding that government experts would also be called upon to testify.

In 2001, Meghrahi was the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, most of whose 270 victims were from the United States.

He was allowed to return to Tripoli after serving only eight years of his 27-year sentence.

News reports said BP had lobbied for the bomber’s release to safeguard a lucrative oil deal with Libya, an allegation Scotland denies.

In other controversy, staff at BP have been ordered to stop manipulating photographs of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response.

BP admitted it has issued new guidelines to staff to “refrain from doing (sic) cutting-and-pasting” after several ‘official’ company images were doctored.

One image, taken inside a helicopter, appeared to show it flying off the coast near the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig. But technology news website Gizmodo pointed out several mistakes which showed the helicopter could not have possibly been flying at that point.

What gave it away? A control tower at the top left of the picture, a pilot holding a pre-flight checklist and gauges showing the parking brake was engaged.

Satirical website thedailymash.co.uk yesterday poked fun, saying BP has been accused of manipulating an image of a Gulf of Mexico pelican to show the bird giving the ‘thumbs-up’.

“Close examination of the image has revealed that it may have been a sophisticated attempt by the company to give the impression that pelicans love being covered in oil,” the site reported.