By IRNA,
London : Britain has warned Libya not to hold celebrations to mark the first anniversary of the return home of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, amid suggestions from Tripoli that he could live for up to seven more years.
“The celebrations that greeted Megrahi’s return to Libya a year ago were insensitive and deeply distressing to the [Lockerbie bombing] victims’ families,” the Foreign Office said.
“Any repetition of these celebrations this year would be completely unacceptable. Megrahi remains a convicted terrorist responsible for the worst act of terrorism in British history,” a spokesman said.
Megrahi is the only person convicted over the 1988 bombing in which 270 people died and his release from a Scottish prison on August 20 last year on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, provoked diplomatic dispute with the US.
Britain is currently locked in a stand-off over a US Senate investigation over the release and claims that it was linked with BP signing a $20 billion oil contract with Libya and a prisoner exchange deal agreed by former prime minister Tony Blair.
Press reports suggested that Britain’s ambassador to Tripoli, Richard Northern, has made clear to senior Libyan government officials that any public events honouring Megrahi could damage flourishing relations between the two countries.
Prime Minister David Cameron has said that he was opposed to the release arranged by Scotland’s devolved government after doctors claimed that the former Libyan agent was expected to live for only a few months.
The majority of the passengers killed on the Pan Am flight en route to New York were American, when it exploded over the Scottish border village of Lockerbie 22 years ago.