US senator hopes to quiz British witnesses in Lockerbie bomber release
By APFriday, July 30, 2010
US senator hopes to quiz UK witnesses on Lockerbie
LONDON — A U.S. senator wants to send investigators to Britain to question key witnesses on the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez told the BBC late Thursday he would want the investigators to interview witnesses including Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and former British Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had complained about the British witnesses’ unwillingness to attend a Capitol Hill hearing probing the decision to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of bombing an American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. The attack killed 259 people.
The committee wants to know whether oil company BP had sought al-Megrahi’s release in return for lucrative oil deals.
Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, said there is no precedent for any country’s officials to give evidence to a committee from another government.
But he did hold out the possibility of holding meetings with investigators — as he would with other visitors from other governments.
BP has acknowledged that it had urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, but stressed it did not specifically seek out al-Megrahi’s release.
Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the attack on the jetliner in the skies above the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland. The December 21, 1988 bombing killed 259 people — mostly Americans — on board the plane, and another 11 on the ground. He was sentenced to life in a Scottish prison, with a minimum of 27 years, but in 2008 was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and released on compassionate grounds.
