TRIPOLI: A year after the controversial release from jail of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on medical grounds, Libya continues the secrecy over the health of the ex-intelligence agent convicted of the deadly Lockerbie bombing.
Serving a life sentence in Scotland for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, Megrahi was given an early release on August 20 last year, after doctors said he had prostate cancer and had just three months to live.
But he is still alive a year later, causing an outcry in Britain and the United States, where the majority of the 270 victims of the attack were from.
Libya has maintained a news blackout over the 58-year-old Megrahi’s health, who was given a hero’s welcome when he returned home.
His last public appearance was in September when, looking ill and seated in a wheelchair, he received a large African delegation at a Libyan hospital.
The sole report on his health was made public in December, when doctors said his condition had worsened and that he was still having chemotherapy.
Not another word has been heard about his health since then, and the Libyan media have ignored the topic altogether. Authorities have said they "wanted to leave him in peace."
Those around him say Megrahi lives a secluded life with his family, at a villa in the smart district of Damas in Tripoli that is permanently surrounded by security staff.
"He only leaves to go to the hospital or to pay a visit to his mother," one of his close relations told AFP, adding only that his health was "stable."
For Tripoli, "the case of Megrahi and Lockerbie was classified," said Youssef Khatali, a physician and political analyst.
"Libya does not want to remain captive to the past. This is a chapter in the past," he added.
Questioned about Megrahi’s illness, Khatali said, "No doctor in the world can give precise forecasts on the death of a patient."
"Why this haste to see him die? This is completely inhuman," deplored Samira Ali, a teacher of political science in Tripoli.
For her, the renewed debate in the United States and Britain about Megrahi’s release "is an attempt to again tarnish Libya’s image."
For years, Libya was an international pariah following accusations of terrorism in the 1980s.
It began rejoining the community of nations, especially after handing over Megrahi for trial under Scottish law in 1999, and paying 2.7 billion dollars to compensate families of the Lockerbie victims four years later.
Reports that British oil group BP had possibly lobbied for an early release for Megrahi in order to secure its own interests in oil-rich Libya, have fuelled further anger, especially in the United States following BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last April.
BP, which in 2007 signed a deal worth at least 900 million dollars (700 million euros) with Libya — at the time the firm’s biggest-ever deal of its kind — has denied ever pressing for Megrahi’s release.
The day Megrahi was freed, Seif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and a key player in the negotiations which led to the release, had spoken of a deal with Britain.
But more recently Shukri Ghanem, head of Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation, denied there had been any deal besides pure business.
"BP is a large company which does not need the interference of politics," Ghanem told AFP.
"We signed with this company one of the best agreements ever signed by Libya," he added.
