lockerbie bomber
Two U.S. senators ratcheted up the pressure on BP and British government officials Monday to provide answers to the questions now swirling around the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.
A group of senators from New York and New Jersey have repeatedly voiced suspicions that Scottish authorities released al Megrahi as part of a deal allowing oil giant BP to drill off the Libyan coast. BP, a British corporation, is already dealing with a public relations nightmare as the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, is set to lead a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday on the controversy surrounding al Megrahi’s release. Several British officials have declined invitations to testify.
“The abundance of incredible coincidences” surrounding al Megrahi’s release demands transparency, Menendez said Monday. “A cloud of suspicion” will hang over the issue until all of the relevant questions have been answered.
Menendez accused the Scottish and British governments of trying to point the finger of blame at each other in the decision to release al Megrahi. They’re “playing a game of diplomatic tennis worthy of Wimbledon,” he said.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, said she is concerned that the release was “an example of profits being put above people.”
The senators need to know if “blood was given for money,” she said. “We need to know that justice was served in this case.”
The two senators were joined by relatives of three of the victims of the bombing.
“The increasing silence” of authorities in London and Edinburgh leads me to “think one thing: They’re guilty of something,” said Eileen Walsh, who lost her father, brother and sister.
Menendez and Gillibrand were part of a group of four senators who met for 45 minutes last week with Prime Minister David Cameron, asking the British leader for an independent investigation into the release of al Megrahi and any possible involvement BP might have had. Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey also attended.
Most of the bombing victims were Americans. The flight was headed from Frankfurt, West Germany, to New York via London, England, when it exploded in the air.
source:(CNN)
