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PM 'did not want Megrahi to die in Britain'

Libyan officials were secretly told that Gordon Brown wanted the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to return home rather than have him die on British soil.

The message was conveyed by a former Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell after the Libyans had warned that Megrahi's death in a Scottish prison would have a "catastrophic" impact on relations between the two countries.

The revelation was contained in a pile of documents released yesterday by the UK and Scottish governments in an attempt to prove that no deal was struck to return Megrahi in exchange for Libyan oil. But it increased the pressure on the Prime Minister to end his two-week silence on whether he supported the release of the terminally ill prisoner. The disclosure was a new setback for Mr Brown who had hoped that the cascade of documents would put an end to the damaging controversy.
Read entire article at The Independent