Last updated at 9:41 AM on 20th August 2009
. Blair to strenghten the Rwandan Nazism.The pair thrashed out a controversial prisoner transfer deal just before BP chairman Peter Sutherland announced the firm was investing $900million – about £545million – to search for oil in Libya. If the firm strikes rich, it could be worth £13billion.
The Scottish Government confirmed that its justice secretary Kenny MacAskill would announce Megrahi’s fate at 1pm today.
It is widely expected that the terminally-ill 57-year-old, the only person Read more: Lockerbie bomber set to be released this afternoon despite Obama’s desperate appeal for him to die in Scottish prison.
If as expected he is released rather than moved to a Libyan jail, he will almost certainly board a private jet at Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire.
The affair has caused a huge transatlantic rift with families of the victims outraged.
Megrahi’s wife
Aisha told The Times her husband still ‘didn’t know’ when he would be freed from Glasgow’s Greenock prison, but was ‘very happy’ at the prospect of returning to his homeland.
It was also reported that the convicted bomber had called his mother in Libya and told her he hoped to be with her by Ramadan, Hajja Fatma, 95, told the Tripoli Post in Libya: ‘I do not close the house’s door at all. I am expecting him to enter at any moment.
‘Eleven years I did not spend the holy month of Ramadan with him, I am waiting for that da
y when he comes back.’
She maintained that her son was innocent of killing 270 people in the Lockerbie bomb, saying ‘he would not slaughter a chicken’.
The U.S. government continued to put last-minute pressure on the Scottish Executive yesterday, with a spokesman for Mr Obama insisting Megrahi should ‘serve out his term’ in Scotland.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also issued a personal plea to keep the bomber behind bars.
Death sentence: Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is dying from prostate cancer
The former New York Senator said she knew many of the American families who lost relatives in the atrocity and that to release Megrahi would be ‘absolutely wrong’.
Mrs Clinton yesterday said Megrahi’s release would be ‘inappropriate, and very much against the wishes of the family members of the victims who suffered such grievous losses’.
She added: ‘I take this very personally because I knew a lot of the family members of those who were lost.
‘I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime.
‘We are still encouraging the Scottish authorities not to do so, and hope they will not.’
Later, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Mr Obama, added: ‘It’s the policy of this administration that this individual should serve out his term where he’s serving it right now.’
In a thinly-veiled attack on U.S. attempts to influence the decision, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has insisted ‘international power politics’ will be ignored.
But the SNP can expect a huge transatlantic outcry if, as is likely, Megrahi is granted mercy.
Critics are suspicious that Mr Blair’s deal was part of an attempt to develop closer relations with the former pariah state to protect Britain’s oil interests.
Susan Cohen, whose only child Theodora, 20, was killed in the bombing, said: ‘Tony Blair has behaved absolutely appallingly. Some people would describe it as blood money.
Despite the likelihood of Megrahi’s release, there have been no public moves to bring back the Libyan gunman who murdered WPC Yvonne Fletcher in London in 1984.
The 25-year-old was patrolling a protest outside the Libyan Embassy when she was killed by a bullet fired from inside. All those inside were allowed to return to Tripoli under diplomatic immunity.
WPC Fletcher’s mother Queenie, 76, of Dorset, last week said she was ‘sickened’ at any deal to repatriate Megrahi.
