Lockerbie Bomber Reportedly Doing Fine

Whether or not the release of al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison was tied to any oil deals as has been alleged, the reason given for his release was that the Lockerbie bomber was close to death from prostate cancer.

Yet the Telegraph recently reported that he seems to be doing better than you might have expected:

Megrahi, who is suffering terminal prostate cancer, was sent home to Libya to die after medical experts concluded in a report on July 30 he had just three months left to live.  The time span was crucial because only prisoners with three months or less to survive are eligible for release on compassionate grounds.

[A senior source involved in his release]  told The Sunday Telegraph: “His condition has not deteriorated in three months. He is pretty much in the same way as he was when this all started. He is just as he was. There is nothing that leads anyone to believe he is in any different condition to when he left Scotland.”

Now these sorts of predictions are necessarily imprecise.  But I’m sure the doctors who examined the terrorist did their best to give  honest, unbiased opinions.

For example:

Prof Sikora, who is the medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, was one of three doctors who visited Megrahi in jail on July 28.

He was paid a one-day consultancy fee by the Libyan government to draw up a report delivered two days later. In an interview in September not long after Megrahi’s release, Prof Sikora said he was initially “pessimistic” that the experts could say he would survive any less than a year.

But Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination.

“The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans],” he said. “To start with I said it was impossible to do that but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that.”

Of course you could, Doctor.  Whoever pays the piper, right?

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