The wreckage of the Lockerbie bombing in Scotland in 1988 Edinburgh - Isam Younis and Agencies   Scotland urged the Libyan authorities to help them arresting the rest of the participants in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, which was considered as the worst attack on Britain. Scottish prosecutors had asked Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) to give them access to papers or witnesses that could implicate more suspects, possibly including deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi.
However, Libya’s interim justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi turned them down, telling reporters: “The case is closed.”
“Personally I did not receive any request (from prosecutors), but what I know, as a lawyer, and as a justice minister, is that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was prosecuted and convicted and he spent more than 10 years in prison,” Alagi told AFP.
“Then they decided to release him on compassionate grounds and this was approved by the Scottish and British governments. And I say we should not prosecute the same person twice.”
Former Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001 and sent to a Scottish prison to serve a life sentence. The Scottish government released him and sent him back to Libya on compassionate grounds in 2009 because he had cancer and was thought to have only months to live.
His release and return to a hero’s welcome in Libya angered many in Britain and the United States, home to most of the victims.
Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter was among those killed in the attack, told Reuters in an emailed statement: “Suggesting that the Lockerbie case is closed is ludicrous.
“I am not surprised that the new interim government might want to avoid getting involved, but this is a miserable attempt to avoid a perfectly reasonable request for any information or evidence that there might be in Libya. Perhaps there is nothing.”
No one at Scotland’s public prosecution service was available to comment on the Libyan minister’s statement. A spokesman earlier said Scotland had asked the NTC to supply “any documentary evidence and witnesses which could assist in the ongoing inquiries”.
“Lockerbie remains an open enquiry concerning the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the murder of 270 people,” the spokeswoman said before the Libyan rejection.
Scottish prosecutors also noted that Megrahi’s trial court had accepted he had not acted alone.
Police at the time said they had submitted a list of eight other suspects whom they wanted to interview but that Qaddafi had refused to allow them to be questioned.
In March, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libya’s former justice minister and now its interim leader, said he had evidence of Qaddafi’s involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
A second Libyan man, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, also stood trial at a Scottish court sitting in The Netherlands with Megrahi, but was acquitted of mass murder in the trial in 2001.
He told Sweden’s Expressen newspaper last month that Qaddafi should be tried in court over widespread suspicions he ordered the bombing.
“There is a court and he is the one to explain whether he is innocent or not,” Fhimah said. “He has to.”
Secret files released earlier this month showed that Muammar Qaddafi’s now-toppled regime warned of “dire consequences” for relations between Libya and Britain if Megrahi died in jail in Scotland.
The Scottish and the British politicians have been subjected to international criticism over the release of Megrahi two years ago for humanitarian reasons. Megrahi is suffering from prostate cancer, but he is still alive, and lives in Libya.