London, April 12: The British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said Moussa Koussa, former Libya Foreign Minister who flew to London, would not be forced to leave the country.
Hague added that Koussa, who is blamed for masterminding the Lockerbie bombing, could choose a range of places to live.
The Lockerbie bombing blew up a Pan American Boeing 747, heading from London’s Heathrow airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The flight crashed over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 243 passengers onboard — many of them Americans, 16 crew and 11 others on the ground.
Koussa, the head of Libya’s intelligence agency since 1994 and a senior intelligence agent in 1988 when the bombing happened, has met with the British Foreign Office officials and has been questioned over the bombing. He is also facing inquiries from the International Criminal Court.
Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, and his co-accused Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah were acquitted at the trial in 2001. Meghrai remained the only convicted of the bombing and Fhimah remained free. However, any further information provided by Koussa could convict Fhima as well.
“This man was convicted of the largest mass murder in British history. That should have been coursing through ministerial veins and brains when they read these memos,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron, describing Gordon Brown government’s decision as “profoundly wrong.”
Meanwhile, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the Scottish Secretary at the time of the bombing, said one of the released memos has shown that former Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell has pledged the release of Megrahi to his Libyan counterpart.
“Does this not confirm the previous government was up to its neck in this shoddy business; that it was desperate to see the release of Mr Megrahi and it must therefore share responsibility with the Scottish Government for one of the most foolish and shameful decisions of recent years?” he said.
The families of the Lockerbie bombing victims have asked the British government to follow up their demand.
Susan Cohen, whose daughter was on Pan Am Flight 103, said Koussa “should probably be hanged for what he has done,” stressing that the relatives of the victims might also be interested in using Koussa to “get to” the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was also a victim of Lockerbie bombing, said, “The underlying problem is that many of us are not satisfied with the verdict that Megrahi was guilty as charged.”
“Koussa was at the centre of the regime in 1988, so if anyone knows the role Libya had to play in it, he would. It’s important for us to get any information that we can. But anything he would say would have to be taken with a huge pinch of salt because of his current predicament,” he added.
——–Agencies