Call For Probe Into BP's Role In Lockerbie Bomber Release

Abdel al-Megrahi at Tripoli Medical Center. (AP)

With outrage growing over the continued existence of Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Senators Chuck Schumer and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) are demanding an investigation into the role that BP may have played in securing Megrahi's "compassionate" release last year. Doctors had predicted that Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, would be dead in three months, but he's reportedly living in luxury in Libya. Families of the 270 victims of the bombing are sickened, and there's increased speculation that Megrahi was released to secure a lucrative oil contract for BP off the coast of Libya.

BP will begin drilling in the next few months, and stands to earn as much as $20 billion from the deal, according to Lautenberg, who wrote in a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands. The families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103 deserve to know whether justice took a back seat to commercial interests in this case." Lautenberg has actually been demanding an investigation into BP's role in Megrahi's release since September 2009, two weeks after he was returned home to Libya.

"This is such a slap in the face to the families who've lost loved ones; something has to change," Schumer "fumed" during a press conference yesterday. "The only way that Britain can clear this up is to demand the return of the terrorist [Abdelbaset al-Megrahi] from the Libyan government and to renounce all oil deals with the Libyan government." Megrahi only served eight years of his life sentence for the bombing.

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By John Del Signore in News on July 13, 2010 5:48 PM

Comments [rss]

peanuthead

oh, and, if any of this is true, i'm pretty sure bp is not the only oil company behind the clemency deal.

peanuthead

meanwhile ariel sharon keeps on keepin' on in complete freedom despite the hundreds or thousands the of deaths he has been found responsible for at sabra-shatila by a court of law???!!!

please, zionist america needs to get its shit straight about how it feeds its voracious appetite for arab oil and supports an apartheid nation that produces almost nothing of much vital use to the world. you can't have it both ways!

greeen

if true, sick. Just/ Simply F*ckin sick.

interlard

Dear America,

Please continue to bend over and take it, because you just HAVE to keep filling up that SUV.

Much thanks,

- The Oil Industry.

bobchadwick

And as long as American jobs are threatened by reducing our usage of oil, we'll keep sucking at Earth's teet. Tonight on NBC Nightly News (yeah, I still watch the evening news), there was an oil rig worker who was talking about losing work because of the drilling moratorium that Obama's trying to put in place. The last line of the segment said something along the lines of, "sure, people might lose their lives, but Jimmy the oil worker might lose his way of life."

People need to realize that we can't keep doing such harmful things just for the sake of keeping people employed. We moved on from using whale oil and I don't see any whalers crying about not having jobs.

gawzmta

> I don't see any whalers crying about not having jobs.

Apparently NBC Nightly News doesn't have much coverage of Japanese issues these days.

bobchadwick

I was trying to make a joke, but I supposed Japanese whalers whale researchers probably don't want to lose their jobs either. Anyway, I think they hunt whales to eat study them, not so much for their oil.

bobchadwick

Curses, my strikethroughs didn't make it into my post! Just imagine strikethroughs on the words "whalers" and the word "eat."

Andrew

It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands.

But presumably its OK for the 81 non-Americans ?

bleeckerite

Let's be honest- Americans are rarely very empathetic to global issues like these unless it involves innocent American lives. We're still good people, though, right? RIGHT???

wobbleSmith

this guy isn't a government official of any nation, so we can send a crack team of covert ops in to kill his face, right?

as for BP, these guys keep getting worse and worse...