SNP pressured to name Megrahi doctors
By politics.co.uk staff
The Scottish government faces calls to name the doctors who advised that Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi would die within three months.
Scottish Labour’s community safety spokesman James Kelly said more details were needed about the decision by Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to free Megrahi last August.
Megrahi remains alive nearly 12 months after being released on compassionate grounds. A report by Andrew Fraser, the Scottish Prison Service’s director of health and care, has already been released.
But the information which he was working on has not.
“We know that Megrahi intended to start chemotherapy – he indicated that in his application for release,” Mr Kelly said.
“It’s time we have full disclosure.”
Megrahi remains the only man convicted for the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 – Britain’s worst ever terrorist atrocity, in which 270 people died.
Scottish Labour is looking to press home the party’s lead in the polls nine months ahead of next year’s Holyrood elections.
A poll released yesterday by TNS-BMRB put Labour on 46% of first-past-the-post voters, with the SNP on 32%.
The nationalists remain upbeat, however, pointing out that the SNP has maintained its 2007 election-winning share of the vote.
Business convenor Bruce Crawford said: “This is a very strong poll rating for Scotland’s government, with the SNP… being in a better position in the polls nine months out from the next Holyrood election than at the same stage before the last election.”
