Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, has been found apparently comatose in a palatial villa in north Tripoli. Megrahi is slipping in and out of a coma and only being kept alive with oxygen and an intravenous drip, according to relatives attending him at the property, The Guardian newspaper reported on Monday.
Megrahi, last seen at a televised rally in Tripoli last month alongside former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was tracked down by CNN international correspondent Nic Robertson. “He appears to be a shell of the man that he was, far sicker than he appeared before … at death’s door,” the paper quoting Robertson as saying.
Khaled, son of Megrahi, told the broadcaster that there was no doctor, there was nobody to ask and “we don’t have a phone line to call anybody.” Megrahi was discovered as the Libyan rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC) ruled out extraditing him to Britain. Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said: “We will not give any Libyan citizen to the west. Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again. We do not hand over Libyan citizens. Gaddafi does.”
Megrahi is the only man convicted over the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, mostly Americans, when it exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. He was freed on August 20, 2009, after prison doctors said he had prostate cancer and probably had only three months to live. East Renfrewshire council, which received regular updates on Megrahi’s condition from the former regime, had been trying to locate him after the rebels’ captured the Libyan capital.
The Scottish government and East Renfrewshire council issued a joint statement saying there had been contact through Megrahi’s family over the weekend. “There was no evidence of a breach of his licence conditions, and his medical condition is consistent with someone suffering from terminal prostate cancer. Speculation about Megrahi in recent days has been unhelpful, unnecessary and indeed ill-informed,” they said.
“Any change in Megrahi’s circumstances would be a matter for discussion with the National Transitional Council as the legitimate governing authority in Libya.” The NTC’s comments on extradition are also an apparent blow to British hopes of putting on trial the suspected killer of Yvonne Fletcher, the police officer shot dead in 1984 outside the Libyan embassy. Scotland Yard has identified a former Libyan diplomat as the prime suspect.
Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed a pledge by NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil to co-operate fully with extradition. But the justice minister’s comments appear to cast doubt on the possibility. No one has been prosecuted over the murder of WC Fletcher. But it has emerged that a witness saw Abdulmagid Salah Ameri, then a junior diplomat, firing a gun from inside the building.
