Gaddafi's Death Leaves Lockerbie And Yvonne Fletcher Questions Unanswered

Gaddafi's Death Leaves Lockerbie And Yvonne Fletcher Questions Unanswered

Muammar Gaddafi has taken unanswered questions about the Lockerbie bombing and the murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher with him to the grave, justice campaigners have said.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the 1988 Lockerbie atrocity, said Gaddafi should have been kept alive and put on trial. He told the BBC: "I think he did take with him questions that he might have been able to answer. As far as justice being done is concerned, the pictures seem to show that he was first captured and then potentially lynched or shot once in captivity.

"If that is the case, as opposed to what the committee are putting out publicly, then it was no form of justice and I think it would have been much better if he could have been kept alive so that he could have been perhaps extradited to the Criminal Court of Justice in the Hague in order to have a fair trial and to answer the questions that he could."

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the atrocity which killed 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie four days before Christmas, was freed from Greenock prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he had terminal prostate cancer. Doctors said he had around three months to live.

Last month officials from Libya's National Transitional Council told the UK Government they would co-operate with Scottish prosecutors and police investigating the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

It has always been accepted that Megrahi did not act alone. He told Reuters news agency earlier this month, from his home in Tripoli, that "new facts" about the bombing would be announced in the coming months. Megrahi was an intelligence agent during Gaddafi's rule.

Dr Swire has always maintained that Megrahi is innocent but thinks Gaddafi would have known who committed the crime: "I don't have any evidence that Gaddafi was involved either but I think at the very least Gaddafi would have known who was going to do Lockerbie and how they were going to do it," he said.

Former police officer John Murray, who was standing just a few yards from WPc Fletcher when she was gunned down outside the Libyan Embassy in London, said the death of Gaddafi was "bittersweet".

He told the BBC: "The early reports that Gaddafi had been captured were for me very good news. When we later found out that he had been confirmed dead, for me it was no celebration, it was the worst result that I could ever imagine. The death of Gaddafi has left so many questions unanswered.

"In some respects it is good news because the main suspect, Matouk Mohammed Matouk, is still alive and possibly still in Libya. He has survived the last few months under the protection of Gaddafi. Now he has got no one to look after him so I think there is a reasonable chance that he will be detained and stand trial for Yvonne's murder."

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