Kuwait Times

Published Date: August 22, 2009

LONDON: The jeering mob outside a Scottish prison, the cheering crowd at a Tripoli airport, the furious families of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing: The release of the only man convicted of blowing up a Pan Am flight in 1988 has brought high drama and controversy. Britain yesterday condemned the "upsetting" scenes of jubilation in Tripoli at the return of Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi and considered scrapping a royal visit to Libya as a sign of displeasure.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the scenes "tremendously offensive." Despite the strong words, the diplomatic end of the decades-long Lockerbie saga is unlikely to damage steadily warming relations between the West and Libya, a country once reviled as a pariah state. "It will introduce a note of caution in the West's dealing with Libya," said Diederik Vandewalle, a Libya specialist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. "I don't think it will have much of an impact at all.

Thousands of young men greeted Al-Megrahi's plane at a Tripoli airport after he was released from a Scottish prison Thursday on compassionate grounds. Some threw flower petals as the 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent stepped from the Afriqiyah airlines jet. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned the scenes as "deeply distressing," and said the way Moammar Gaddafi's government behaved in the next few days would help determine whether Libya is accepted back into the international fold
.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had written to the Libyan leader before Al-Megrahi's release urging Libya to "act with sensitivity" when he returned. Yet by Libyan standards, Al-Megrahi's welcome was relatively muted. Hundreds of people waiting in the crowd for his plane were rushed away by authorities at the last minute, and the arrival was not aired live on state TV. It was an unusually low-key approach for a country that used to snap up any opportunity to snub the West and could easily bring out hundreds o
f thousands to cheer if it chose to.

It suggested that Libya is wary of hurting its ties with the United States and Europe and had listened to President Barack Obama's warning not to give Al-Megrahi a hero's welcome. "It seemed as some form of last-minute compromise between those who felt it their patriotic duty to welcome him and those in the Libyan hierarchy who wanted to heed the demands of the US that it should be low-key," said Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Libya.

There was no Libyan dignitary to receive him, and no formal reception. This is compulsory in Arab hospitality, so the absence of a welcoming party is quite significant," he added. Al-Megrahi is the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The explosion of a bomb hidden in the cargo hold killed all 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground in Britain's worst terrorist attack.

Both Libya and Britain have acted to make Al-Megrahi's release as smooth and understated as possible. Announcing it on Thursday, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said he was acutely aware of the bereaved families' pain, and stressed that he had made the decision only on narrow legal grounds. Top cancer specialists have given Al-Megrahi less than three months to live, and it is established legal practice to release prisoners that close to death on compassionate grounds.

There have been 30 requests for compassionate release in Scotland over the last decade, 23 of which were approved, according to official figures. Al-Megrahi also was released just in time to arrive home for the start of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. MacAskill said while "those who have been bereaved cannot be expected to forget, let alone forgive ... Al-Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power.

The British government, meanwhile, walked a fine line - condemning Al-Megrahi's reception without criticizing the decision to free him, which was made in Edinburgh under Scotland's separate judicial system. The BBC reported that Britain was considering canceling a planned visit to Libya by Prince Andrew, who has visited the country several times in his role as a British trade ambassador.

Andrew's office said a visit for next month was in the planning stages and that Buckingham Palace was taking advice from the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office would not confirm that the visit would be canceled. British officials also refuted claims the release was made to improve relations and bolster commercial ties - a view held by some victims' relatives in the US Miliband said any suggestion that the release was spurred by commercial interests was "a slur both on myself and on the government.

While Britain does have oil interests in Libya - notably a $900 million exploration deal between BP PLC and Libya's National Oil Company - they are small compared to investments by Italy's Eni SpA. Although the legal story of Lockerbie is now over, some argue that the full truth about the attack may never be known. Although Libya accepted formal responsibility for the bombing, many there see Al-Megrahi as an innocent victim scape-goated by the West.

The Libyan's lawyers have argued the attack was the result of an Iranian-financed Palestinian plot, and a 2007 Scottish judicial review of Al-Megrahi's case found grounds for an appeal of his conviction. Some Lockerbie victims' relatives in Britain were disappointed when Al-Megrahi dropped his appeal against his conviction, which he had to do in order to be freed and sent home. They had hoped new details about the bombing would come out at a future trial.

Even as he left prison on Thursday, Al-Megrahi protested his innocence. "I say in the clearest possible terms, which I hope every person in every land will hear - all of this I have had to endure for something that I did not do," he said in a statement. Yesterday, Scottish prosecutors formally dropped their appeal against the jail term imposed on the Lockerbie bomber. They had called the 27-year sentence too lenient and sought to have it extended. Their appeal is now irrelevant. Al-Megrahi is free after se
rving just eight years.

Al-Megrahi's trial at a special Scottish court set up in The Netherlands, which came after years of diplomatic maneuvering, was a step toward normalizing relations between the West and Libya, which spent years under UN and US sanctions because of the Lockerbie bombing. Over the next few years, Gaddafi renounced terrorism, dismantled Libya's secret nuclear program, accepted his government's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the victims' families. Western energy companies -
including Britain's BP - then moved into Libya in an effort to tap the country's vast oil and gas wealth.

Gaddafi is savoring a double diplomatic coup with the release of the Lockerbie bomber and an apology from the Swiss president as he prepares to celebrate 40 years in power on September 1. Hours after Megrahi's release, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz apologized formally to the Libyan people over the arrest last year of Gaddafi's son, Hannibal.

In stark contrast to Western views of Megrahi as a mass murderer, Ahmed Zwei, former Libyan ambassador to London and now envoy to Morocco, said he in fact deserves respect. "We consider Megrahi to be a fighter who made sacrifices for his country and we should respect him," Zwei said.

One Libyan journalist said Megrahi's tumultuous reception was a public relations "revenge on the West, which had rolled out the red carpet for the nurses." This was a reference to six Bulgarians who been sentenced to death in Libya after being convicted of infecting hundreds of children with AIDS. They were freed in 2007 and returned home-not to serve out life sentences as had been agreed but to a pardon and freedom.

As for the Swiss case, newspapers in the Alpine country were fuming yesterday after the apology of President Merz. Hannibal Gaddafi and his pregnant wife were arrested in a luxury Geneva hotel in July 2008 after two servants claimed they had been mistreated. The couple were freed two days later on bail of $444,000 (500,000 Swiss francs) and the complaint was dropped after a lawyer for the servants said they had received compensation.

But in October, Libya suspended oil deliveries to Switzerland, withdrew assets worth an estimated five billion euros from Swiss banks, ended bilateral cooperation programs and placed restrictions on Swiss companies. "Today I have fulfilled my mission and achieved my goals of wiping the slate clean of last year's incident and opening the Libyan market" to Swiss firms once again, Merz said on Thursday. "It is a satisfying outcome for me." For Switzerland the dispute has been "a matter of law, while for

Libya it is a matter of honor," Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Caly-Rey said. Long shunned as a sponsor of terrorism, Libya has gradually returned to the international fold in recent years and is now a key interlocutor when it comes to the war on terrorism or the settling of conflicts in Africa, where Western countries have massive investments. Its diplomatic clout is strengthened by its massive oil reserves, which Western oil companies are eager to exploit after years of Libyan isolation. - Agencies