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EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- Scotland's justice secretary says he is ready to meet with members of the U.S. Senate and defend the decision to release a Libyan terrorist. Kenny MacAskil said the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was made appropriately and given due process -- despite the fact that the cancer-stricken airliner bomber is still alive nearly a year after he was released with a prognosis of dying within three months. Megrahi was sent back to Libya last year after serving nearly 10 years for the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103, which crashed in Scotland and killed...

The son of Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi is to celebrate the first anniversary of the Lockerbie bomber's release by giving a party for him. Saif Gadaffi, whose friends include Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson, will attend the revelry for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi in his two-storey house in Tripoli. He will foot the bill for food and drink, following a day's fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. When Megrahi, 58, was released on August 20 last year, Scottish authorities said he had only three months to live and was 'going home to die'. Frank Duggan, a lawyer...

A cancer expert who said Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had only three months to live before his release from prison was quoted Sunday as saying he should have been more cautious about the prisoner's chances of survival. Al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds from a Scottish prison in August 2009, and allowed to return home to Libya, where he continues to be treated for prostate cancer. The Libyan is the only person to have been jailed over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 259 people — mostly Americans...

Libya will mark the first anniversary of the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi by thanking God for Gordon Brown and Kenny MacAskill, the two men who let him go. Colonel Gaddafi, the country’s dictator, has ordered prayers to mark Friday’s anniversary of the decision to free Al Megrahi from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. The Libyan leader is keen to avoid a repeat of the international condemnation sparked by the decision to give the convicted terrorist a hero’s welcome when he returned to Libya on August 20, 2009, allegedly with just three months to live.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has made an outspoken attack on the United States over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds. US lawmakers want Scottish politicians to explain to a Senate committee their decision to release Megrahi. But the cardinal said ministers should not go crawling to the US like lapdogs. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, released Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, after being told that three months was a "reasonable estimate" of his life...

A SPECIALIST who examined the Lockerbie bomber revealed yesterday that he warned the Scottish Government that the cancer which won the Libyan his freedom would not kill him within three months. The warning, revealed to The Sunday Express by Professor Jonathan Waxman of the Hammersmith Hospital, London, heaps further pressure on Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to justify the decision to release terrorist Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds 11 months ago.

LONDON (AFP) – Scottish ministers on Wednesday defended their decision to free the Lockerbie bomber after renewed US anger over the release threatened to spoil the new British premier's first visit to the White House. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said he did not regret freeing Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds last August. And Salmon denied claims from US lawmakers that the release formed part of an oil deal between BP and resource-rich Libya. "If you take a decision in good faith, you don't regret it," Salmond, the leader of Scotland's devolved government, told BBC radio. He...

It was the worst terrorist attack in Britain's history, the deadliest assault on U.S. civilians until 9/11 and a political powder keg that roiled governments around the world. On Dec. 21, 1988, a bomb exploded in the forward cargo hold of Pan Am Flight 103, a jetliner flying from London to New York. Within less than a minute, the Boeing 747 splintered into thousands of pieces and fell 31,000 feet, smashing down in the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. The impact killed 11 villagers and destroyed 21 homes. None of the 259 people on board the aircraft survived. On August 21,...

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is living with his family in a luxury villa in Libya six months after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds because he had less than three months to live. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August. Professor Karol Sikora, the London-based doctor who examined Megrahi and predicted he would be dead by last October, admitted this weekend that the fact the bomber is still...

A final decision on whether the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be allowed to return to Libya is expected early next week, but the United States today warned that it would be against such a move. The Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, however, is thought to have decided in principle to send Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001 of killing 270 people in the bomb attack on Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, back to Libya. MacAskill is expected to get a final report from his officials by Monday on whether to set Megrahi...