Al-Megrahi cancer release defended by Scotland two years on
Lockerbie bomber's release has been vindicated, says Scottish government, despite the 'terminal cancer patient' still being alive
Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi arrives back in Tripoli two years ago. The 'terminal cancer patient' is still alive today. Photograph: AP
The Scottish government says its decision to release the Lockerbie bomber exactly two years ago has been vindicated.
The release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from Greenock Prison on the grounds that he had just three months to live has proved controversial as he is still alive two years after returning home to Tripoli.
On the second anniversary of his release, two US senators have demanded his extradition from Libya. New Jersey senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg want the rebel-led transitional Libyan government to send Megrahi to the US.
But a spokesman for Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said the government stood by the decision. In a statement, the spokesman said the decision "was taken on the basis of Scots law" and was not influenced by economic, political or diplomatic factors.
"We stand by it, and al-Megrahi is dying of terminal prostate cancer."
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 20 August 2009, after prison doctors said he had prostate cancer and likely had only three months to live.
Last month he appeared at a televised rally in Tripoli alongside Muammar Gaddafi.
Muammar Gaddafi will be dead, imprisoned or exiled within hours. Then it will be paybacks time and it is anyone's guess how this will end. Without doubt, the overthrow of Gaddafi was made possible by NATO support for the rebels. Obama should demand the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to US custody. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi should stand trial in the US and we shall see if time and the inside of a supermax loosens Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's tongue.
ReplyDeleteUnder a secret deal between Barack Obama and Libyan rebel leaders, Al Megrahi would have been detained by opposition troops and then handed over to US Special Forces.
ReplyDeleteThe Scottish government has insisted the decision to release Al-Megrahi was taken in good faith, and based on medical evidence from Dr Andrew Fraser, the director of health and care of the Scottish Prison Service.
But British Home Secretary William Hague said Al-Megrahi’s release was a ‘great mistake’, adding: ‘This was absolutely the wrong thing to do. It shows the medical advice it was based on was pretty much worthless.’
Oil prices should start falling if Moammar Gadhafi is toppled today.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sam, good link.
ReplyDeleteAl Jazeera is reporting on its live blog that a senior rebel leader, Mahmoud Jibril, said there are "still pockets of resistance in and around Tripoli" early Monday of forces loyal to Qaddafi.
ReplyDeleteObama will have bagged bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and al-Megrahi. Whoda thunk it.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Drug
ReplyDeleteTo 12:58 above.
‘This was absolutely the wrong thing to do. It shows the medical advice it was based on was pretty much worthless.’
ReplyDeleteThat's the British Health Service for you, fifth largest employer on the planet.
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And the US economy.
ReplyDeleteLibyan rebels could resume oil output at two large fields in the east of the country within three weeks in a bid to ease fuel shortages since war broke at the start of the year.
ReplyDeleteOPEC member Libya is the third-largest oil producer in Africa and holds the continent's largest oil reserves. It produced 1.6 million barrels of oil a day before the uprising.
Large Area Around Japanese Nuclear Plant Declared Uninhabitable For Decades
ReplyDeleteWho'd a thunk it.
xxxxx
My hunch is there will be low level fighting in Libya for years to come. We seem to have chosen the at least temporary winning side.
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Libya Without Qadafi - One Hell of a Mess
ReplyDelete140 tribes, fundamentalists, al-Qaeda, Qadafi tribe the biggest one, don't take a vacation there.
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Depressed Mothers Cause Anxious Kids
ReplyDeleteEnlarged amygdalas cause problems. We are certainly sensitive complex organisms.
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huffington-fucking-post?
ReplyDeleteIs that allowed here?
Reports are coming from journalists and activists about gunbattles in central Tripoli, including Green Square. The blogger Ali Tweel reported on Twitter the sound of gunfire near Qaddafi's sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound, and CNN's Jomana Karadsheh is reporting smoke and the sound of heavy smoke coming from the area.
ReplyDelete-0.5%
ReplyDeleteClosed.
Japan is using additional oil equal to 3 percent of the Global Total after shutting down their Nukes
ReplyDeleteATF Supervisors of Botched Gun Sting Get Promoted
ReplyDeleteThe federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known as ATF) has come under fire for promoting three supervisors of a sting operation that led to the illegal sales of firearms to drug cartels in Mexico.
At least 2,000 guns were reported lost in Operation Fast and Furious, many of them later found at crime scenes in Mexico.
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GPS Chips were put in the stocks of the weapons, but the batteries ran out after 40 hours!
Clouseau spins.
Get Smart!
ReplyDeleteFRENCH INTELLECTUAL BERNARD-HENRI LEVY, REBEL SUPPORTER:
ReplyDelete"Gadhafi now controls a lot less than 20 percent of Tripoli. He now controls nothing more than his bunker.
"These French arms (delivered to the rebels) powerfully contributed to the victory, as did the French pilots. But it was the Libyans themselves, young Libyans who were mocked and insulted for their so-called indiscipline, it was they who took Tripoli last night ...
"The National Transitional Council is capable of managing what it has promised to do, that is to say the transition. These men have always said they had no personal ambition and did not wish to run the country in the long term. They are there to organize the transition ... to help install a new government in a few months, which they want to be a democratic government."
"Libya will go down in history as the anti-Iraq. Iraq was democracy parachuted into a country by a foreign power in a country which hadn't asked for it. Libya was a rebellion which demanded help from an international coalition led by France, and which will continue now in the reconstruction of the country."
I am glad to hear you got married Allen. Though I really don't know why.
ReplyDeleteb
Sun Aug 21, 08:29:00 PM EDT
Thanks
The Colonel and al-Megrahi acted extra-judicially. They should be disposed of extra-judicially.
ReplyDeleteBegin might have made the same call, but there you have it.
'Tis a black day for Ishmael and Amalek...meanwhile, Syria's up to bat...
ReplyDelete"Human rights groups say more than 2,000 people have been killed in the government's crackdown on protests."
Syria's Assad: 'I am not worried' about security
If I have given the impression of criticizing Begin for his part in attacking the British government/military headquartered in the southern wing of the King David Hotel, I do not. My low regard for Begin has its origins elsewhere.
"Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.2"
"For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.4"
Shortly before the King David attack, at least 40 Jews awaiting transfer to Israel from a Polish refugee camp were brutally murdered by Poles in a post-War pogrom. No prosecution followed. Not a word has been spoken about that "crime". Had the British not refused these Jews immediate passage to Israel, they would not have been in Poland, apparently an insult to patriotic Poles.
Corporations pushing for job-creation tax breaks shield U.S.-vs.-abroad hiring data
ReplyDeleteSome of the country’s best-known multinational corporations closely guard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.
So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.
According to the 2011 Fortune 500 list, these firms are the nation’s biggest.
Some of the same companies that do not report their jobs breakdown, including Apple and Pfizer, are pushing lawmakers to cut their tax bills in the name of job creation in the United States.
But experts say that without details on which companies are contributing to job growth and which are not, policymakers risk flying blind as they try to jump-start the hiring of American workers...
Grow US Jobs? Sure. Put it in Writing? Well, No.
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From my wife Sam, things I can't control.
ReplyDeleteb
Mr Magrahi (sic) did not carry out the destruction of Pan Am 103. Nor did anyone from the PFLP GC. PA103 was destroyed as a result of an agreement reached in Glion, Switzerland between the US and Iranian governments to allow Iran its vengeance for the deliberate shooting down of IR655 by the USS Vincennes
ReplyDeleteGood day! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this website?
ReplyDeleteI'm getting fed up of Wordpress because I've had problems with hackers and I'm looking at alternatives for another platform. I would be awesome if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.
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