By DAVID ROSE Scottish Ministers offered to let Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi go home to Libya in return for a secret deal to end payouts to prisoners forced to use 'slop-out' buckets in their cells, documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday revealed last night. Disclosure of the deal – proposed by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill – apparently contradicts Ministers' public statements since Al Megrahi was freed in August 2009. Mr MacAskill released him on 'compassionate grounds' eight years into a life sentence for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, which killed 270, citing the opinion of prison doctors that Megrahi had terminal prostate cancer and at most three months to live. Lockerbie bomber: Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, left, is given a hero's welcome in Libya by Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader Eighteen months later, having responded well to chemotherapy – which he had not started when he returned to a hero's welcome from the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi –Megrahi is still alive. Mr MacAskill and Mr Salmond have repeatedly claimed that neither pressure from the UK Government nor commercial considerations such as a BP oil deal, played a part in their decision. 'We weren't interested in threats, we weren't interested in blandishments, we were only interested in applying Scots justice and that's what we did,' Mr Salmond said last December. But the documents acquired by this newspaper, coupled with interviews with UK officials closely involved with the affair, point to a different story. In one, a senior civil servant reports that Mr MacAskill explicitly suggested a 'deal' linked to Megrahi over prisoners' slopping-out claims. By late 2007, Scotland was facing thousands of such claims following a House of Lords ruling in favour of a Scottish prisoner, Andrew Somerville. He had been released several years earlier, and was claiming damages under the Human Rights Act because he had been forced to relieve himself in a bucket and 'slop out' each morning. Deal: Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond (left) and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill were said to have proposed for Al Megrahi to go home to Libya in return for a secret deal to end payouts to prisoners forced to use 'slop-out' buckets in their cells The Scottish Government argued that such actions should be limited by a 'time bar' of one year, but the Lords disagreed. Mr MacAskill feared the Somerville judgment could cost the Scottish Executive at least £50 million. Meanwhile, in June 2007, then Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Colonel Gaddafi with former BP chief executive Tony Hayward, and agreed the multi-million-pound oil deal in principle. But by the autumn of 2007, Gaddafi was refusing formally to ratify BP's concession until the British signed a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) to allow Megrahi to come home. Former UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw has confirmed that he and fellow Ministers were under colossal pressure from BP to do this. But they were also aware that Mr Salmond and the Scots furiously objected to Megrahi being included in a PTA. Welcome: Megrahi was given a hero's welcome when he returned by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi Last month, Vanity Fair magazine reported claims by a senior UK official that Mr Salmond suggested Scotland's objections on Megrahi could be dropped if Parliament amended the Scotland Act to curb slopping-out damages. Mr Salmond's spokesman denied the assertion. The same official yesterday repeated his earlier claim and added that Mr Salmond asked that powers to regulate firearms be transferred to the Scottish Executive. Mr Straw said only that his talks with Mr Salmond 'have to remain private'. Now the leaked documents add support to the official's claims. In an email dated November 9, 2007, John McTernan, special adviser to then Scottish Secretary Des Browne, wrote to Mark Davies, his counterpart in the office of Mr Straw: 'I understand from our officials that the discussion with MacAskill went well, but that he indicated he wanted to do a 'deal' that included movement on firearms devolution and movement on Somerville.' The following month, Mr Straw signed a PTA that covered Megrahi, and a few weeks after that, the BP deal was ratified. After a special vote by Parliament in Westminster, the slopping-out deal was concluded in June 2009 – two months before Megrahi's release. Another email, from Mr Straw's private secretary Darren Tiernan to Jim Gallagher, deputy secretary at the Scottish Office, on October 21, 2008 discusses whether Mr Straw should write to Mr Salmond formally requesting Megrahi's freedom. A spokesperson for Mr Salmond said last night: 'These two emails are about entirely different issues. Their real interest is in providing new insight into what the Labour Government's political advisers and officials thought about the changed position of UK Ministers towards the release of Megrahi. 'We are processing our remaining unreleased documents and they will demonstrate that the Scottish Government's position remained consistent.' Scottish Ministers offered to free Lockerbie bomber in secret deal to end 'slop bucket' payments to prisoners
Last updated at 2:11 AM on 6th February 2011
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Sunday, 6 February 2011
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