An intriguing sideshow to the Libyan revolt is the fate of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber released to Libya from a Scottish prison two years ago, supposedly on the “compassionate” grounds that his terminal prostate cancer left him with less than three months to live.
The Libyan government lobbied the U.K. government of Gordon Brown hard and heavy for his release. He received a hero’s welcome at the airport upon his return to Libya in August 2009. And Moammar Gadhafi himself purportedly bought him the two-story Tripoli villa in which he has been living since then.
When Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London’s Heathrow airport on Dec. 21, 1988, there was a bomb on board. It detonated over Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew as well as 11 people on the ground in the village of Lockerbie. Of the dead, 189 were Americans. Physical evidence pointed to al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines.
