Lockerbie Bomber Should Never Have Been Released

It was a travesty of justice when a Scottish judge ruled that the convicted bomber of Pan Am Flight 103 was allowed to be released back to Libya. The judge had enabled his release for health reasons - taking into account that he had prostate cancer. It is even more so when you have reports that his health situation is such that he might now live another 10 years.

Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi for the Libyan authorities almost a year ago, told The Sunday Times it was "embarrassing" the bomber had outlived his three-month prognosis.

Megrahi, 58, is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, which left 270 dead.

The Scottish government provoked outrage from the United States when it released him from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he dying of metastatic prostate cancer.

In Scotland, prisoners are eligible for release on compassionate grounds if they have fewer than three months to live.

A report in the Sunday Times said Libyan authorities, keen to secure Megrahi’s release, asked several experts to put a three-month estimate on the bomber’s life but Professor Sikora was the only one to agree.

Professor Sikora, the dean of medicine at Buckingham University and medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, was paid for his medical assessment of Megrahi at Greenock prison on July last year.

Sikora is embarrassed that he got this terrorist's prognosis wrong. Thanks for that. His misguided decision enabled a convicted terrorist to go free. Scotland should seriously reconsider its "compassionate" release program.

The decision to release this terrorist was made in part because of oil and gas deals between the British government and the Libyan government. The compassionate release program enabled all this - and in the process the only convicted terrorist involved in the murder of 270 people got just a few days in prison per each victim.