Billions have been made by BP as it spills oil around the globe. A recent BP-Libya oil deal that promises more billions has caught the eye of a senator that wonders if BP helped set free a terrorist convicted of killing Americans to get the contract. Suspicions arose after Libyan Abdel Bastet Al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was released from a Scottish prison last August after doctors said he had three months to live. Al-Megrahi is living large nearly a year later when BP oil rigs head to the Libyan coast. Post resource – Senator says BP-Libya oil deal linked to Lockerbie bomber release by Personal Money Store.
Lautenberg and others want Lockerbie bomber returned to prison
U.S. lawmakers want to overturn the release of the Lockerbie bomber, imprisoned for the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 bombing. New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg sees evidence suggesting the Lockerbie bomber release is tied to the BP-Libya oil deal as an opportunity to increase political pressure on the culprit of the2 010 oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico.
Is timing of Lockerbie bomber release and BP-Libya oil deal a coincidence?
The release “on compassionate grounds” of the Lockerbie bomber following a prostate cancer diagnosis is now in question. Al-Megrahi, now 58, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. Evidence suggests that oil spill business BP may have angled for Al-Megrahi’s release after serving just eight years and Lautenberg has asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate. He wants to know if the Lockerbie bomber’s release was connected to a BP plan to start drilling within the next few months off Libya, which the senator says could earn the company up to $ 20 billion.
Lockerbie bomber’s demise greatly exaggerated
The British government felt pressure from U.S. senators to investigate the Lockerbie bomber release after a doctor said Al-Megrahi has ten years ahead of him. The Associated Press reports that Lautenberg, along with Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York and Lautenberg and fellow New Jersey senator Robert Menendez, wrote a letter the U.K.’s American ambassador last week demanding the investigation. In his response to the senators, British Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald said due process was followed.
BP may have American blood on its oil-stained hands
In a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Lautenberg said BP may have influenced the British and Scottish governments about the Lockerbie bomber’s release to improve its chances for a 2007 oil deal. He said BP admits that in 2007 it told the British government that a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya could hurt the oil deal. Citing “overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom, Jack Straw, the British Secretary of State for Justice, later changed his mind about excluding Al-Megrahi from the prisoner transfer.
Families of Lockerbie victims get oil-stained justice
BP has declined to discuss the senators’ probe of the Lockerbie bomber release. However, CNN reports that on the BP website the oil spill business talked up the 2007 Libyan oil agreement as “the single biggest exploration financial commitment an international energy company has ever made to Libya”. A letter to Gillibrand from Britain’s ambassador, posted on the British Embassy website, defends the Lockerbie bomber’s release. Brian Flynn, who fought to keep Al-Megrahi in prison after his brother was killed on Pan Am flight 103, told CNN:
“You can’t allow the process of justice to be corrupted by the cynical mercantilism of one business.”
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