Britain denies oil deal link with Lockerbie bombing

August 31, 2009 09:32:34 AM

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Britain denied on Sunday any link between trade with Libya and the Lockerbie bomber's release after a report suggested London was swayed by an oil deal into making him eligible for a prison transfer home.

The Sunday Times said the government decided two years ago that it was "in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom" to ensure Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi could at some point be sent back to Libya.

According to letters obtained by the newspaper, Justice Secretary Jack Straw dropped an attempt in 2007 to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya because of "wider negotiations" with Tripoli.

His decision came after discussions between Libya and BP over a massive oil exploration deal became bogged down, the paper said. The deal was ratified by Libya soon afterwards.

In response to the report, Straw acknowledged that the prisoner transfer agreement was part of efforts to bring Libya back into the international fold after it abandoned its nuclear weapons programme.

"What is totally untrue is that any part of these negotiations with the Libyans was that at some stage Mr Megrahi would be released," the justice secretary told Sky News television.

He said that under the agreement, the Scottish government had a veto over any prisoner transfer -- and noted that Edinburgh had in fact rejected such an option for Megrahi in favour of a compassionate release earlier this month.

"The implication that, somehow or other, we have done some backdoor deal in order to release Mr Megrahi is simply nonsense," Straw added to the BBC.

Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison after serving just eight years for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 270 people.

The decision and the jubilant homecoming for Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, sparked anger from the US administration as well as many US relatives of the victims.

Channel 4 News showed footage Sunday of Megrahi in a hospital bed in Tripoli wearing an oxygen mask and attached to a drip.

London insists the decision to release Megrahi was made solely by the semi-autonomous Scottish authorities.

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond also denied the decision was based on commercial deals, saying it was purely on compassionate grounds.

Speculation, however, continues about Britain's stance, particularly as the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam, has said Megrahi "was always on the negotiating table" in oil and gas deals with Britain.

In a letter to his Scottish counterpart, Kenny MacAskill, dated July 26, 2007, Straw wrote he favoured an option to omit Megrahi from the prison transfer agreement by stipulating that any prisoners convicted before a specified date would be ineligible.

Five months later, he changed his mind. The Sunday Times says Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to get Megrahi included.

In a letter dated December 19, 2007, he wrote: "I had previously accepted the importance of the al-Megrahi issue to Scotland and said I would try to get an exclusion for him on the face of the agreement.

"I have not been able to secure an explicit exclusion.

"The wider negotiations are reaching a critical stage and, in view of the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom, I have agreed that in this instance the (prisoner transfer agreement) should be in the standard form and not mention any individual."

Within six weeks of this letter, the oil exploration deal was finally ratified by Libya, the Sunday Times reported.
BP denied political factors played a role in the oil deal's ratification.

Straw said the proposed exclusion of Megrahi from the transfer agreement was dropped because "it went beyond the standard form" for such agreements.

"The negotiations over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) were part of a wider agreement for the normalisation of relations with Libya as part of bringing them into the international community," he said.