LOOKING frail and breathing heavily, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, looked near to death last night.
His family allowed television cameras to his sickbed for the second time in 10 days in an attempt to dispel suggestions the 59-year-old, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, is feigning illness.
His son Khaled, who lived with other members of Megrahi’s family in Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, while his father was in Greenock Prison for the terrorist atrocity, told the BBC: “I want everybody in the UK, and specifically in Scotland, to see my dad and how he is so sick.
“Some people say he is not sick, he is not at home, he has run away. I want you to come and see my dad, that he can’t move from his room. He is staying in his room between his mother, my brother and my sister.”
At the height of the civil war in Libya, the whereabouts of Megrahi were not known as he had temporarily lost contact with East Renfrewshire Council, the supervising authority. Two weeks ago, contact was re-established and he was said to be drifting in and out of a coma. He was described as being “at death’s door”.
It was suggested that Megrahi’s medication, which was said to have kept him alive well beyond his prognosis of three months, had been stolen by looters.
At the time, Khaled said: “There is no doctor, there is nobody to ask and we don’t have a phone line to call anybody.”
Amid continuing calls from America for Megrahi to be extradited to face trial there, First Minister Alex Salmond has decried the “ridiculous” conspiracy theories that have suggested the convicted terrorist is not that ill, and has called for him to be “left to die in peace”.
Meanwhile, Washington last night said it believed the convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles that crossed from Libya into Niger did not contain Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, but only his officials.
A State Department spokeswoman said the US Government had urged the Niger Government to detain them.
There were suggestions yesterday that the convoy also included looted gold and cash from Libya’s central bank.
Adani Illo, Niger’s ambassador to the United Nations, pointed out surveillance over thousands of miles of desert was incredibly difficult.
“The desert zone is vast and the frontier is porous. If a convoy of 200 to 250 vehicles went through, it is like a drop of water in an ocean,” he said.
Tuareg nomads living in the Sahara claimed those fleeing Libya included many black Africans, some of whom might have been mercenary fighters for Gaddafi now fearing reprisals from his enemies among Libya’s Arabs.
The convoy is said to have travelled to the northern city of Agadez escorted by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony.
A French military source surmised that it might be joined by Gaddafi en route to adjacent Burkina Faso, which has offered the fugitive dictator asylum.
Earlier this week, it is believed Mansour Dhao, head of Gaddafi’s security brigade, was allowed into the Niger capital of Niamey.
France, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Libya’s new rulers and Nato, have all denied knowing where the deposed leader is or that there has been a deal to let him go abroad or find refuge from Libyans and the International Criminal Court, who wish to put him on trial.
Bernard Valero, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it was for Libyans to decide the venue, but that the dictator must not slip away quietly. “He will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years,” he said.
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