Lockerbie bomber to be told fate
20 August 2009
Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is set to learn whether he will be allowed to return to Libya.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill is likely to announce his release on compassionate grounds, the BBC revealed last week.
Megrahi, 57, who has served eight years of a life sentence for killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight, has terminal prostate cancer.
Some 189 Americans were among those who died in the airliner explosion.
Mr MacAskill has been under intense pressure from the US government to keep Megrahi behind bars, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying his release would be "absolutely wrong".
Earlier, a letter from seven US senators including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry had urged the Scottish Government to block Megrahi's bid for release.
Brian Taylor BBC Scottish political editor Scottish ministers must hope discontent is primarily aimed at the option of prisoner transfer and not the more likely avenue of compassionate release. That, I would suggest, is likely to be a tough sell.
US opinion may simply find it difficult to understand why a man convicted of involvement in the death of 270 people, including US citizens, has been released. Read Brian Taylor's blog
Mr MacAskill said on Wednesday he had informed families and other interested parties that he had reached his decision on the applications for compassionate release and a prisoner transfer. He will announce his decision at 1300 BST at the Scottish Government's ministerial headquarters in Edinburgh.
A spokesman for the administration insisted the decision had been reached "on the basis of clear evidence and on no other factors".
BBC correspondent Peter Hunt said Megrahi was described as having only months left to live.
"Given this prognosis, it's thought that the perpetrator of Britain's biggest terrorist atrocity - who two days ago abandoned his appeal against his sentence - has now spent his last night in a Scottish jail. "It's expected he will be allowed to return home to die," he added.source: bbc.com