South African former president Nelson Mandela called on Monday for Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to be moved to serve his time in a jail in a Muslim country.
Speaking after meeting Al-Megrahi for more than an hour in the Scottish jail where he is serving his life sentence, Mandela said he hoped to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush about the case.
”It would be fair if he transferred to a Muslim country – and there are Muslim countries which are trusted by the West,” Mandela told a news conference at Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow.
”It will make it easier for his family to visit him if he is in a place like the Kingdom of Morocco, Tunisia or Egypt.”
Mandela visited Al-Megrahi in order to check on the conditions at Barlinnie Prison, where the Libyan intelligence agent is serving life for murder for smuggling a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103.
The plane exploded over the southwest Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground.
Mandela, who spent more than 20 years in prison under the apartheid regime, played a crucial role in persuading Libya to hand over the two men suspected of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
The second suspect, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted by a Scottish court set up in the Netherlands when the verdicts were returned in January last year.
”Megrahi is all alone. He has nobody he can talk to,” Mandela said.
”It is a psychological persecution that a man must stay for the length of his long sentence all alone. He says he is being treated well by the officials, but when he takes exercise he has been harassed by a number of prisoners.
”He cannot identify them because they shout at him from their cells through the windows and sometimes it is difficult even for the officials to know from which quarter the shouting occurs.”
The former president also called for a fresh appeal on Al-Megrahi’s behalf, recalling how a four-judge commission from the Organisation of African Unity had criticised the basis for his conviction.
”It will be a pity if no court reviews the case itself,” Mandela went on, saying it would be only fair if he was given the chance to appeal either in Britain or to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. – Sapa-AFP