Senators Urge Continued Lockup for Pan Am Lockerbie Bomber

Seven U.S. senators on Monday signed a letter imploring Scotland's justice minister not to release the Libyan man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, PoliticsDaily.com has learned.

The senators' letter underscores calls made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder to Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill last week asking him to keep Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi in prison and not let him return to Libya. (My PoliticsDaily.com scoop about Clinton and Holder here.)


"We know that the Scottish government shares our commitment -- and the world's -- to support justice and oppose acts of terrorism," the senators wrote. "That is why we urge you to ensure that Abdel Basset al-Megrahi serves the remainder of his sentence in prison in Scotland."

The letter was signed by Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey; Senators Kristen Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York; Senators Ted Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Vermont's Senator Patrick Leahy. All are Democrats.

The Dec. 21, 1988, bombing killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. Al-Megrahi received a 27-year sentence in 2001 and has two separate pleas pending: release on compassionate grounds because he has prostate cancer and under a new British-Libyan prisoner exchange treaty.