Lockerbie bomber ‘could live another 10 years’

The London cancer specialist on whose advice the alleged Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, was freed from jail last year on compassionate grounds, has admitted that he is finding it "embarrassing" that Megrahi has outlived his three-months-to-live prognosis by more than eight months.

Professor Karol Sikora has also admitted that the Libyan authorities who commissioned him to examine Megrahi in Greenock jail on July 28 last year had been hoping for a three-month verdict.

"It was clear that three months was what they were aiming for," Sikora told the Sunday Times. "Three months was the critical point. On the balance of probabilities, I felt I could sort of justify (that)."

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As a result of the advice of Sikora and two other doctors, Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, announced Megrahi's release. The only man ever convicted of the bombing of the PanAm jetliner over Lockerbie in 1988 - in which 270 people died - was allowed to fly home to Libya.

The doctors' deadline meant Megrahi should not have survived beyond October 28 last year. But having undergone further treatment in Libya, Megrahi remains alive. As The First Post's new Lie Detector (above) clearly illustrates, he's outlasted the Greenock prognosis by months. Indeed, if Megrahi is still with us on July 28, he will have survived a year rather than three months.

Sikora is now saying that Megrahi could live for much longer. "There was always a chance he could live for 10 years, 20 years," he said. "But it¹s very unusual."

According to the Sunday Times, it is understood that Sikora never mentioned in his official report that Megrahi might live so long. "It is embarrassing that he's gone on for so long," he said. "There was a 50 per cent chance that he would die in three months, but there was also a 50 per cent chance that he would live longer."

This is not the first time that Sikora has changed his story. In March this year, under pressure from angry relatives of the bombing victims who could not understand why Megrahi was still alive, Sikora said the Libyan would be dead "within four weeks".

Megrahi's cancer had, said Sikora, spread from his prostate to his kidneys, liver, pelvis and lymph nodes. He had stopped responding to chemotherapy and other treatments and it was only a matter of time.

Relatives of the victims, along with those politicians who questioned Megrahi's release, are expected to make further demands for an inquiry into how and why MacAskill took his controversial decision to send him home. ·