20100716
reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The Scottish government denied on Friday it had any contact with oil firm BP before its decision last year to release the Libyan man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing.

It said it had transferred Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to Tripoli purely on compassionate grounds.

"We had absolutely no representations from BP," a spokesman for the Scottish administration said.

"Mr Megrahi ... was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the Parole Board and prison governor."

Scotland has its own legal powers within the British political system.

The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Thursday it would ask BP officials to testify after the UK-based oil giant said it had lobbied the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.

Megrahi was the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special Scottish court sitting in The Netherlands in 2001.

Scotland released Megrahi last August after being advised he was suffering terminal prostate cancer and had as little as three months to live. He returned to Tripoli and is still alive.