BP has made billions spilling oil all over the globe. And now a U.S. Senator is suspicious that BP will make more billions by helping set free a terrorist convicted of killing Americans in order to secure a BP-Libya oil deal. Suspicions arose after Libyan Abdel Bastet Al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was released from a Scottish prison last August after doctors said he had three months to live. A year later Al-Megrahi is living within the lap of luxury as BP prepares to drill off Libya’s coast.
Lawmakers want Lockerbie bomber back within the slammer
The Lockerbie bomber, convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, would still 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 opportunity to increase political pressure on the culprit of the2 010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Something fishy about timing of BP-Libya oil deal and Lockerbie bomber release
The Lockerbie bomber release from prison “on compassionate grounds” after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer is now in question. Al-Megrahi, now 58, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. Yahoo News reports that Lautenberg wants the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to investigate whether serial oil spiller BP influenced Al-Megrahi ’s release after he served only eight years of a life sentence. He wants to know if the Lockerbie bomber’s release was connected to a BP plan to start drilling in the next few months off Libya, which the senator says could earn the company up to $ 20 billion.
Lockerbie bomber escapes Grim Reaper
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 an additional decade. An Associated Press article published on Yahoo News said that Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York and New Jersey senator Robert Menendez joined Lautenberg to demand an investigation from the British embassy in Washington. Due process was followed, said British Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald in his response.
Is American blood on BP’s hands?
In a letter about his BP-Libya oil deal/ Lockerbie bomber suspicions to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Lautenberg said a 2007 oil agreement may have influenced the British and Scottish governments about the Lockerbie bomber’s release in 2009. He said BP admits that in 2007 it told the British government that a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya could hurt the oil deal. Al-Megrahi was at first 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”.
BP-Libya oil deal trumps justice
BP has declined to discuss the senators’ probe of the Lockerbie bomber release. But CNN reports that a statement about the 2007 Libyan oil deal on the company’s website calls it “the single biggest exploration financial commitment an international energy company has ever made to Libya”. The British Embassy in Washington posted a letter on its site from the British ambassador to Gillibrand defending 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 company.”
More details available at these sites
news.yahoo.com
latimes.com
cnn.com
No comments:
Post a Comment