Lockerbie Bomber Missing?

UPDATE: British Officials Speak to Lockerbie Bomber, Thought to Be Missing

Fears over the whereabouts of the Lockerbie bomber have been put to rest after British officials spoke to him at his home in Tripoli.

From Sky News:

Staff from East Renfrewshire Council were able to contact Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi today at his home in Tripoli.

...A council spokesman said: "We have now spoken to Mr Megrahi, who is in his house. There is no cause for alarm, he is in his house."

"He wasn't able to speak to us yesterday but he was able to do so today. We have spoken to him and we don't have any concerns. He is definitely at home in Tripoli."

Megrahi would have breached his licence conditions if he had changed his permanent address without informing the council.

The council spokesman said if staff had been unable to contact Megrahi today, they would have reported the situation to the Scottish Government.

The council also received the latest medical report on the state of Megrahi's health at the end of November.

But the spokesman said: "We cannot divulge what was in in these reports. They are confidential."

The mystery of the missing Lockerbie bomber is solved.

That doesn't change the fact that his release was a mistake.
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Last August, when the Scottish government released convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds based on his terminal illness, there was outrage among elected officials, family members of the victims, and anyone who has a sense of right and wrong.

That outrage has been more than justified.

The dying al-Megrahi wasn't too sick to go missing, violating the terms of his release.

From TimesOnline:

Mystery surrounded the Lockerbie bomber last night after he could not be reached at his home or in hospital.

Libyan officials could say nothing about the whereabouts of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, and his Scottish monitors could not contact him by telephone. They will try again to speak to him today but if they fail to reach him, the Scottish government could face a new crisis.

Under the terms of his release from jail, the bomber cannot change his address or leave Tripoli, and must keep in regular communication with East Renfrewshire Council.

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic and relatives of the 270 people who died in the 1988 bombing expressed anger about al-Megrahi’s disappearance. Richard Baker, Labour’s justice spokesman in the Scottish Parliament, said the whole affair was turning into a shambles and putting Scotland’s reputation at risk. “This flags up just how ludicrous it is that East Renfrewshire Council, a local council thousands of miles away from Libya, is responsible for supervising al-Megrahi’s conditions of licence,” he said.

Eliot Engel, a New York congressman, said: “I think it was a tremendous mistake to let him out in the first place. I don’t think a convicted terrorist has any integrity to abide by any type of agreement.”

It was crazy to release al-Megrahi.

Some moves you know are wrong.

Obviously, freeing him and allowing him to return to Libya was an enormous mistake.

He was supposed to be dead by now.