US senators link BP with Lockerbie bomber

US senators urged US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday to investigate whether oil giant British Petroleum (BP) pushed for the release of the Lockerbie bomber to protect a lucrative deal with Libya.

"The question we now have to answer is, 'was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?'" asked Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Robert Menendez and Frank Lauten-berg of New Jersey.

The lawmakers pointed to a September 2009 report in Britain's Times newspaper - denied by BP - that the oil giant lobbied British Justice Secretary Jack Straw for the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi to safeguard a 2007 oil exploration deal valued at $900 million.

Al Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, was released from a Scottish prison in August last year on health reasons despite vehement US opposition.

The Scottish government allowed the Libyan to return home on compassionate grounds after a diagnosis that he would live just a matter of months - but a recent report said that he may live for 10 years or longer.

An investigation into BP's reported role "will help complete our understanding of the Scottish court's decision to release this murderer and will help us understand if BP might use blood money to pay claims for damage in the Gulf of Mexico," the US lawmakers wrote to Clinton.

The New York Times quoted US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley as saying Monday that Al Megrahi now lives as a free man, and "we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103."

Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, told Bloomberg Wednesday that the company has a rig in place to start a well in the Gulf of Sirt, off Libya's coast, in the next few weeks.

Agencies