By spilling oil all over the world, BP has made billions. And now a U.S. senator is wondering if BP stands to make billions more from a BP-Libya oil deal after helping set free a terrorist convicted of killing Americans. Lautenberg became suspicious following the Lockerbie bomber, Libyan Abdel Bastet Al-Megrahi, was sprung from a Scottish prison last August after doctors said he was at death’s door. Nearly a year later, BP prepares to drill off Libya and Al-Megrahi is surviving and thriving.
Lautenberg and others want Lockerbie bomber returned to prison
The Lockerbie bomber, convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, would nevertheless be in jail if the senators had their way. New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg sees evidence suggesting the Lockerbie bomber release is tied to the BP-Libya oil deal as an possibility to increase political pressure on the culprit of the2 010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Suspicious timing – BP-Libya oil deal and Lockerbie bomber release
The release “on compassionate grounds” of the Lockerbie bomber following a prostate cancer diagnosis is now in question. Al-Megrahi, 58, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of killing 270 people, including 189 Americans, within the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. Evidence suggests that oil spill company 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. BP plans to start drilling off the coast of Libya in the next few months, and the senator wants to know if the Lockerbie bomber’s release was a condition of the deal, which he says could net BP $ 20 billion.
Lockerbie bomber has plenty of life left
Other senators sought to put pressure on the British government to investigate the release of the Lockerbie bomber after a doctor said al-Meghrahi could live one more decade. 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. British Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald told the senators that due process was followed.
Did BP manipulate British government to seal oil deal?
Lautenberg, in a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said a 2007 oil agreement may have influenced the British and Scottish governments about the Lockerbie bomber’s release in 2009. BP admitted the oil deal was in jeopardy over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, the letter said. Al-Megrahi was originally excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, but later Jack Straw, the British Secretary of State for Justice, later changed his mind, citing “overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom”.
Families of Lockerbie victims get oil-stained justice
BP has declined to discuss the senators’ probe of the Lockerbie bomber release. But CNN found a statement on BPs site that called the Libyan oil deal “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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