New York — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should investigate whether embattled oil giant BP brokered an illegal deal to free Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in exchange for access to Libyan oil fields, Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday. “No matter how powerful a corporation, how important a foreign government, a blood money deal is a blood money deal,...
Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is seen in his room at Tripoli international hospital, in Libya, on Sept. 9, 2009. Scotland freed him on compassionate grounds to allow him to die at home. But a doctor has said he could live another 10 years.New York — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should investigate whether embattled oil giant BP brokered an illegal deal to free Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in exchange for access to Libyan oil fields, Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday.
“No matter how powerful a corporation, how important a foreign government, a blood money deal is a blood money deal, and we must, must hold people accountable,” Schumer said at a news conference in his Manhattan office where he was flanked by two family members of men killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Al-Megrahi served eight years of a life sentence for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Forty of the victims were associated with Syracuse University and Central New York. Last August, Scotland’s government released the cancer-stricken man on compassionate grounds and he returned to Libya.
Soon after al-Megrahi’s release, BP acknowledged that it had urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya but stressed it didn’t specify his case.
Schumer, D-N.Y., and three other U.S. senators asked the State Department last week to investigate whether there was a quid pro quo for the Lockerbie bomber’s release.
Schumer said Sunday that the U.S. Justice Department should investigate whether BP violated the Foreign Corrupt Services Act.
“Because BP has huge amounts of assets in America, we can bring this case here whether the British government likes it or not,” he said. “So this is a new route that allows us to act directly as opposed to simply putting pressure on the British government.”
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said the department would have no comment Sunday.
Brice Daniels, whose father was killed on Pan Am Flight 103, and Brian Flynn, whose brother was killed in the bombing, thanked Schumer for bringing attention to BP’s possible role in the freeing of al-Megrahi.
“I applaud the senator,” Daniels said. “BP does deserve additional scrutiny.”
Flynn said BP “has chosen to corrupt the process of justice, and our governments allowed it to happen.”
BP, formerly British Petroleum, is trying to staunch a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.
BP gained temporary control of its broken well on Thursday and is hoping to shut it off permanently within weeks.