Lockerbie bomber traced

The Lockerbie bomber has been tracked down to his villa in the Libyan capital, where he is apparently comatose and near death.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was found bedridden, surrounded by his family in their grand home in an up-market part of Tripoli.

His relatives allowed a reporting team from American news channel CNN to enter the house, which they said had been ransacked by looters who plundered all his medicine.

Oxygen and a fluids drip are all that are keeping him alive, according to his family.

His son Khaled al-Megrahi said he had no idea how much longer his father had to live, but insisted he should be able to spend his last few days in peace at home.

“There is no doctor, there is nobody to ask and we don’t have a phoneline to call anybody,” he told the broadcaster.

His family said he had not been eating and they did not know how to treat him.

CNN reporter Nic Robertson said Megrahi looked far worse than he had done when he last saw him two years ago and described his appearance as “much iller, much sicker, his face is sunken...just a shell of the man he was”.

He added: “I was shocked when I walked into the room and saw him in such a state.”

Megrahi was convicted and imprisoned in Scotland for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people.

He was granted compassionate release in 2009 on the basis that he was expected to die from prostate cancer within months. But he survived and was residing in Tripoli until Muammar Gaddafi’s regime fell.

Britain and the new Libyan government have been at loggerheads over the prospects for the bomber – and also Yvonne Fletcher’s suspected killer – being removed from the conflict-torn country.

There have been calls for Megrahi to be brought back to jail in the UK in the wake of the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime.

The Scottish Government and East Renfrewshire Council, who Megrahi must regularly contact under his conditions of release, said any change in his circumstances would be a matter for discussion with the NTC.

Scotland Yard has also identified former Libyan diplomat Abdulmagid Salah Ameri as the prime suspect in the 1984 shooting of WPC Fletcher in London.

Foreign Secretary William Hague struck an optimistic note on the cases yesterday, saying National Transitional Council (NTC) chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil had pledged to “co-operate fully”.

But last night new justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi became the most senior figure so far to rule out handing individuals over.

“We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West,” he told reporters in Tripoli. “Al-Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again ...

“We do not hand over Libyan citizens. (Muammar) Gaddafi does.”

No-one has ever been prosecuted over the murder of WPC Fletcher, who was shot while policing a protest outside the Libyan embassy.

But it has now emerged that an eyewitness saw Ameri, a junior diplomat at the time, firing a gun from inside the building.

Libya does have an extradition agreement with the UK. However, it only covers foreign suspects, rather than Libyan nationals.

Meanwhile, the rebels have dismissed an apparent offer from Gaddafi of talks on a transfer of power.

The NTC’s forces are gathering near the fugitive ex-dictator’s home town of Sirte. Negotiations are taking place with tribal elders in a bid to secure the town peacefully.

There is growing evidence of brutal crimes during the final days of the Gaddafi regime, with more than 50 charred bodies found in a burnt-out warehouse in Tripoli.

Local residents said they were civilians who had been executed last week by members of a brigade commanded by the ex-dictator’s son Khamis.

However, fears have been easing slightly over the humanitarian situation in the capital after desperately needed fuel and water supplies began to arrive.

The newly-installed authorities are distributing some 30,000 tonnes of petrol and a ship carrying fresh water and diesel is due to dock in the next couple of days.