Lockerbie bomber may have 10 yrs left: report

The Lockerbie bomber could survive for 10 years or longer, according to the cancer specialist who said last year he would be dead within three months of his release, a newspaper reported Monday.

Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for the Libyan authorities almost a year ago, told Britain's The Sunday Times it was "embarrassing" that he had outlived his three-month prognosis.

Scotland provoked outrage from the US when it released Megrahi from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal cancer.

Megrahi is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which left 270 people dead.

The newspaper claimed that Sikora, the dean of medicine at Buckingham University in southern England, was the only expert the Libyan authorities could find who would agree to put the three-month estimate on Megrahi's life.

It reported that the advice of two other experts was ignored after they said Megrahi could live for 19 months.

AFP