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| Africa North | ||||
| Lockerbie bomber could live 10 years | ||||
| 2010-07-05 | ||||
Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi for the Libyan authorities almost a year ago, told The Sunday Times newspaper it was "embarrassing" that he had outlived his three-month prognosis.
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. But 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.
The professor told The Sunday Times that the Libyan authorities made it clear to him that if he concluded Megrahi would die in a matter of months, it would greatly improve his chances of being released from jail in Scotland. "It was clear that three months was what they were aiming for. Three months was the critical point," Sikora said. "On the balance of probabilities, I felt I could sort of justify (that)." He denied he came under any pressure but admitted: "It is embarrassing that he's gone on for so long." "There was a 50 per cent chance that he would die in three months, but there was also a 50 per cent chance that he would live longer." Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's eldest son, Seif al-Islam, said in May that Megrahi was still "very sick" with cancer at an advanced stage. | ||||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi for the Libyan authorities almost a year ago, told The Sunday Times newspaper it was "embarrassing" that he had outlived his three-month prognosis. The professor did miss the mark by a bit. Speaks to the issue of the state of Libyan medical knowledge. But of course it was never really about medicine. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-07-05 16:48 |
| #5 The Pan Am 103 Families need to back to court and sue the UK, Scotland, Libya, and this waste of a carbon footprint for Failure to Die in a Timely Fashion. |
| Posted by: Spatch Speaking for Boskone8774 2010-07-05 15:41 |
| #4 I don't really understand why he was released in the first place. Perhaps allow friends and relatives to visit knowing he would die but release him? Perhaps LIbyan medical knowledge is more advanced in cancer research than I was aware. We should not have allowed a leach-gap. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-07-05 13:27 |
| #3 I hope that they needed to perform a double orchiectomy on him to arrest the spread of the cancer. That's common for prostate cancer, you know. If they haven't, I'd be willing to do the job. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2010-07-05 12:15 |
| #2 it was always about the BP contracts |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-07-05 11:46 |
| #1 Not unusual for a man with metastatic prostate cancer to live for years. For many men it's a slow-growing tumor. A false sense of urgency? ;-) Somebody needs to lose their license. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-07-05 01:29 |