Megrahi ‘could live for years’
By politics.co.uk staff
Freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi could live for years, a cancer specialist has warned.
Nearly a year has passed since Megrahi was released from prison by Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Medical advice at the time claimed he could only expect to remain alive for around another three months, but with the first anniversary of his death approaching its validity is increasingly being called into question.
Consultant urologist Professor Roger Kirby of St George’s hospital in London told Channel 4 News he felt Megrahi should have received chemotherapy in jail rather than in Libya, where he is believed to be receiving top-level treatment.
Prof Kirby said improving survival rates on patients receiving chemotherapy, which can extend life expectancies by up to three years, meant it was a “big mistake to let him out on the premise that he would be dead within three months”.
“It may be that newer treatments coming in now will extend that life expectancy even longer, so the longer Mr al-Megrahi lives, the more embarrassing it is that he has been released from jail.”
Two hundred and seventy people died in December 1988 when Pan Am flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, in what remains Britain’s worst ever terrorist atrocity.
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