Professor Karol Sikora and other experts had said Abdel
Baset Al-Megrahi probably had only three months to live when he was freed from
a Scottish jail last August and allowed to return home to Libya. But one year
later, Al-Megrahi, who is being treated for prostate cancer, is still alive.
Sikora, one of three experts who assessed Al-Megrahi’s
health for Libyan authorities, was quoted by Britain’s Observer newspaper
Sunday as saying he should have been more cautious about the chances of
survival.
“If I could go back in time, I would have probably been more
vague and tried to emphasize the statistical chances and not hard fact,” Sikora
was quoted as saying.
“In medicine we say ‘Never say never and never say always,’
because funny things happen. All you can do is give a statistical opinion,”
said Sikora, dean of the School of Medicine at Buckingham University, in
central England.
Scottish authorities deny that the opinions of Sikora and
the other experts who advised Libya entered into the decision to release
Al-Megrahi, though families contend that the advice must have played a role.
“It’s obvious the whole thing was flawed,” said Frank
Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, an advocacy group that
represents some of the families of those killed.
Duggan said Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had
rejected a US government request to commission an independent medical
examination of Al-Megrahi, and also has declined demands from families to
publish in full the advice Scotland received from consultants.
“The Scottish government should be embarrassed and the UK
government should be embarrassed,” said Duggan, a retired lawyer from Rehoboth,
Del., who advises some bereaved families. “It’s no surprise to us that these
doubts are coming out.” Al-Megrahi is the only person to have been jailed for
the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the small Scottish town of
Lockerbie, which killed 259 people — mostly Americans — onboard and 11 on the
ground.
He was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to serve at least 27
years in a Scottish prison, but released in August 2009 on compassionate
grounds.
A report made public by Scottish authorities shows the
Scottish Prison Service’s medical chief, Andrew Fraser, was advised by four
specialists at the time of Al-Megrahi’s release. The report described the
three-month prognosis for Al-Megrahi as “reasonable,” but confirmed that none
of those consulted ruled out that Al-Megrahi might live longer.
Sikora said he was not taking responsibility for
Al-Megrahi’s release. “No one asked me, ‘Should we let him out?’ All they said
was, ‘When do you think he will die?”’ he was quoted as saying.
Rev. John Mosey, from Worcestershire, England, whose
daughter Helga, 19, died in the bombing, said it was wrong to criticize those
who had assessed Al-Megrahi.
“The doctors in the case have been dragged through the mud,
when really it is very difficult to assess how long someone will survive,” he
said. “It was a difficult decision to make and was made in good faith.” Susan
Cohen, of Cape May Court House, N.J., whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora,
died in the attack, said Sikora’s comments were the latest insult to the
victims’ loved ones.
“This is an added kick in the face and another example of
them throwing rocks in the face of the families,” Cohen said Sunday. “This
whole thing is about business interests, money and making profits,” she said,
referring to allegations that oil giant BP pressured Scotland to free
Al-Megrahi so it could win access to Libyan oil reserves.
MacAskill has denied BP had any role in the release of
Al-Megrahi. Former BP chief executive John Browne, who stepped down in 2007,
said Saturday he held two meetings with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi but never
discussed the release of prisoners.
BP has acknowledged that it lobbied the UK government as
Britain and Libya were negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement — known as a
PTA — in autumn 2007, but said it had not raised Al-Megrahi’s case. Al-Megrahi
was not released under the deal, as he was freed on compassionate grounds
rather than transferred to serve out his sentence.
“The PTA happened after I left the company. I went to see
Col. Gadhafi twice and I think I moved things forward, but there was no
discussion about the PTA and no agreement for exploration made at that time,”
Browne said, speaking Saturday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Last week, four Democratic US Senators — Kirsten Gillibrand
and Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New
Jersey — sent a letter to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond asking that
Al-Megrahi’s full medical records be disclosed.
“We’ve never seen that medical evidence. We now know from
the prison doctor that the cancer experts were not absolute in their view that
Al-Megrahi only had three months to live, so there is a lot of confusion here,”
Annabel Goldie, a Conservative Party lawmaker in Scotland’s Parliament, said
Sunday.
Duggan said Scottish authorities have repeatedly cited
patients’ confidentiality as their reason for not disclosing the records.
Sikora told the Observer he remains certain Al-Megrahi will
die of cancer, “I suspect in the next few weeks. To tell the truth, I’ll be
quite glad because we can move on.”
