Another touch of arrogance from US Senators

The real arrogance is when Britons come out with this incredulous faux outrage at the US Senate -- in light of their own government's colossal bungling.

Britain's Sunday Times has published leaked documents which show that the Obama administration was prepared to accept the conditional release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The US government has condemned the Scottish government's decision to release Libyan national Megrahi last August, amid questions about what role lobbying by oil giant BP played in the decision.

Scottish authorities say the decision was made on compassionate grounds because Megrahi was suffering from terminal cancer. Scottish authorities at the time said he was expected to have only three months to live, but he is still alive nearly a year later.

Now The Sunday Times has obtained a letter from the US embassy to Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, written a week before the release, which appears to show that Washington was prepared to accept at least a conditional release.

While wanting Megrahi behind bars, the letter says a conditional release would be "far preferable" to a prisoner transfer to Libya.

The embassy wrote that making Megrahi live in Scotland would mitigate a number of strong US concerns.

So far there has been no response to the leak from the White House.

White House Reportedly Preferred Scotland to Libya for Released Lockerbie Bomber

Published July 25, 2010
FoxNews.com

The Obama administration told Scottish officials last August that, although it opposed any release of the Lockerbie bomber, it would rather see him released in Scotland than transferred to a Libyan prison, according to a secret memo obtained by The Sunday Times in London.

The publication of the memo's contents comes just days after President Obama, at a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, said "all of us ... were surprised, disappointed and angry" by the Scottish government's decision to free Abdel Baset al-Megrahi last year.

Al-Megrahi's release last year was approved based on "compassionate" grounds, on the belief that he had months left to live. The case has sparked renewed controversy recently on reports that al-Megrahi may survive much longer.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07 ... latestnews

It also emerged that MacAskill had formally asked the US embassy in London for permission to release a letter written earlier this month, which said the US government believed that giving Megrahi compassionate release was "far preferable" to transferring him to serve the rest of his sentence in a Libyan jail under the prisoner transfer agreement ratified by the UK government in April.

Informed government sources said the US embassy letter still firmly rejected sending Megrahi home to his family: the US wanted Megrahi to stay in Scotland, effectively under house arrest. They knew in advance that releasing Megrahi would prove deeply controversial.

But MacAskill told MSPs yesterday that allowing Megrahi to remain in Scotland would have been unnecessarily expensive: Strathclyde police had said it would take at least 48 officers to provide round-the-clock security.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/2 ... bomber-snp

US officials warned Scotland over al-Megrahi

By JENNIFER QUINN, Associated Press Writer Jennifer Quinn – Mon Jul 26, 5:08 pm ET

LONDON – American officials were dead-set against the release of the Lockerbie bomber and warned Scottish authorities that scenes of jubilation in Tripoli over his return would upset victims' families, a newly released document showed Monday.

The Aug. 12, 2009 letter from Richard LeBaron, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in London, to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond sets out the views of the American government as Scotland grappled with whether to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the bombing attack on Pan Am Flight 103.

"The United States maintains its view that in light of the scope of Megrahi's crime, its heinous nature, and its continuing and devastating impact on the victims and their families, it would be most appropriate for Megrahi to remain imprisoned for the entirety of his sentence," the letter says, declaring the U.S was not willing to support his release on either compassionate grounds or under a prisoner transfer agreement.

The release of the correspondence comes ahead of a hearing this week in Washington into the circumstances surrounding the Aug. 20 release of al-Megrahi, convicted in 2001 of the attack on the jetliner in the skies above the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland. The December 1988 bombing killed 259 people — mostly Americans — on board the plane, and another 11 on the ground.

The senators will also probe whether an exploration deal between Libya and London-based oil company BP had an impact on the decision to release al-Megrahi.

Britain and Libya began negotiating their prisoner transfer agreement in 2007, and it came into effect last April. BP has acknowledged it had expressed concern to the British government about the progress of the prisoner transfer deal, but said it had not raised the case of al-Megrahi.

The British government has said there is no evidence BP was involved in Scotland's decision to release him, and Scottish authorities have said they had no contact with BP over al-Megrahi

BP signed a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya in May 2007................

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/ap_ ... _lockerbie