The decision to release
this killer looks dumber by the day. It would be one thing if he lasted a couple months longer than they said he would, but five more years?
He just won't die.
The Lockerbie bomber -- who was released from a Scottish prison last year because cancer had supposedly left him at death's door -- could be kept alive for up to five more years.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was said to have just months to live when Scottish authorities made the controversial decision to free him and allow him to return to Libya.
But the terrorist, given a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, has since been taking the chemotherapy drug Taxotere, the British paper The Sun reports today.
Other reports said that al-Megrahi had not been given the drug while he was in prison -- and might not have been allowed a "compassionate" discharge if it had been prescribed.
Scottish opposition spokesman Bill Aitken demanded full disclosure from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
"Was the existence of a drug which is reportedly now extending the life of the Lockerbie bomber included in any of the reports Kenny MacAskill read before making the decision to release him?" he asked.
Meanwhile, he's so popular in Libya people are
naming babies after him.
Al-Megrahi was freed in August from his Scottish prison after cancer doctors said he had only three months to live. Scenes of him being welcomed as a returning hero provoked outrage across Britain and the US, amid widespread suspicion that the release was tied to UK trade deals with oil-rich Libya. Now, to the embarrassment of the ministers who freed him, he is healthy enough to be working on the autobiography which he hopes will clear his name.
But it is the revelation that mothers and fathers in Libya are now naming their children after Al-Megrahi which will most anger opponents of his release. The bomber's father Ali Al-Megrahi said: "His name is revered by numerous families, with newborn babies being named after him everywhere."
It has also been confirmed the Libyan government has made large payments to Al-Megrahi to allow him to live in an exclusive area of the capital Tripoli. A senior Libyan diplomatic source said: "It is safe to say that the family wants for nothing." But in remarks which will boost suspicions that he was freed to re-start UK-Libya trade, Al-Megrahi's brother Mohammed Ali said: "My brother sacrificed 10 years of his life to assist in the lifting of the economic blockade against Libya."
He said around 30,000 people had visited Al-Megrahi since his return, among them members of the ruling Gaddafi family. But many Lockerbie relatives remain convinced Al-Megrahi is guilty. Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theo died in the blast, said: "The thought that there are now lots of little babies who are going to grow up admiring a man responsible for a terrorist atrocity is terrible."
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