Gag me with a koran.

Gaddafi hugs Lockerbie bomber; Britain denies deal

By Salah Sarrar and Luke Baker

TRIPOLI/LONDON (Reuters) – Britain dismissed suggestions of a link between the Lockerbie bomber’s release and energy deals with Libya Saturday, after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi embraced the man and thanked Britain.

“The idea that the British government, the Libyan government, would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it all part of some business deal … it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible and actually quite offensive,” British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said.

London and Washington have roundly condemned the “hero’s welcome” given to the dying Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on his return home after being freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds.

Gaddafi met Megrahi Friday, giving him a warm embrace and getting a kiss in return, expressed gratitude to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth and said their encouragement of Scotland to free him would improve ties.

“This step is in the interest of relations between the two countries … and of the personal friendship between me and them and will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of cooperation between the two countries,” he told Libyan TV…

http://tinyurl.com/l5bqaa

At home with the Lockerbie bomber

By Martin Fletcher

Is he the evil perpetrator of the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, or a sick old man, a loving father and grandfather, who has suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi put on a virtuoso performance when The Times came calling yesterday.

His house, in the Dimachk area of Tripoli, was not hard to find. Policemen stood guard outside. The road was lined with the BMWs of smartly dressed friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects. The high outer walls were festooned with fairy lights and with pictures of the Lockerbie bomber as he looked when he left Libya more than a decade ago. In the garden stood a marquee where he had evidently been welcomed home the previous night.

We sent in our business cards and waited, more in hope than expectation. But ten minutes later we were ushered into the spacious hall of the distinctly plush villa where chandeliers hung above a marble floor — a far cry from the Scottish prisons where al-Megrahi has spent the past eight years. His family bought the house a couple of years ago with help from the Libyan Government.

The man himself was waiting in a reception room at the top of a wide and curving staircase; the curtains were drawn against the fierce afternoon sun and tropical fish swam in illuminated tanks.

He looked weak and grey, far older than his 57 years and scarcely recognisable as the man I last saw at his trial in the Netherlands in 2001. He was supporting himself on a walking stick. Like everyone else he wore flowing Arab robes of spotless white — “not what I wore in prison”, he joked in a soft voice and fluent English. He was seeing us, he explained, “because you came to our house. It is our culture.”

We sat on sofas. No tea was offered because it is Ramadan. To be free, he said, was “something amazing. I’m very, very happy.” When the doctors had told him he had just a few months left to live “this was my hope and wish — to be back with my family before I pass away . . . I always believed I would come back if justice prevailed”.

His mother, 86, had not stopped crying, he said. “I told her, ‘You should laugh, not cry’. She doesn’t know I’m ill.” He asked us not to tell her.

Engineers have rigged up a video link next to a large black plasma television so that al-Megrahi could talk to prison officers in Scotland every two weeks — one of the conditions of his release.

As al-Megrahi was flying home in one of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s personal jets on Thursday, President Obama sought to add another condition. He said that al-Megrahi should live out his days under house arrest. Al-Megrahi laughed. “He knows I’m a very ill person. You know what kind of illness I have. The only place I have to go is the hospital for medical treatment. I’m not interested in going anywhere else. Don’t worry, Mr Obama — it’s just three months.”

He did not come across as bitter or angry but continued to insist on his innocence, as he has done from the day of his conviction. He abandoned his appeal, he said, not because he was guilty but to give himself the best possible chance of going home before he died. He had applied to be freed on compassionate grounds and also to be transferred to a Libyan prison under the terms of an agreement Britain and Libya signed in April. One of the conditions of the latter was that all legal proceedings had to be finished.

He denied reports that he had been pressured to drop the appeal by a Scottish or British government terrified that such a hearing would expose a grave miscarriage of justice, but he added: “If there is justice in the UK I would be acquitted or the verdict would be quashed because it was unsafe. There was a miscarriage of justice.” …

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....806087.ece

Wow… is there any doubt there are already scripts floating around Hollywood depicting what a loving, caring man he is and how it was Britain’s legal system that obviously railroaded him into a conviction?

At least this killer of innocents will get to live out his life in the lap of luxury.

Meanwhile, I suspect Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon are making their travel plans to Tripoli as I type…

Where was he on National Prayer Day?
NOWHERE!!

I believe America is “Wee-Wee’d” off!!

I don’t understand the cognitive dissonance required to celebrate an atrocity while denying its provenance. Some Muslims passed out candy the day 9/11 occurred (most notably in Gaza), yet a majority in several Middle Eastern countries believe that Israel carried out the attacks. Most Muslims say they don’t like Al Qaeda nonetheless they’ll believe that Bush and “the West” attacked the towers and killed 3,000 of our own people. It’s nauseating – like Holocaust revisionism.

A few years ago, I dated a man who had been raised as Muslim but was no longer practicing. He was living in the United States on a work visa from India and hoping to live here permanently. Yet his favorite public figure was an Islamic preacher who advocated Shariah law and the death penalty for apostasy. The same preacher denied that Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist. This ex also had a brochure on his table claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. I was out of there faster than you could say “should have known better.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFves5XqBJU

I miss the grown ups.