{"id":14701,"date":"2009-08-30T01:30:03","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T01:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/sunday_london_times-revealed_lockerbie_link_to_oil_exploration_deal\/"},"modified":"2009-08-30T01:30:03","modified_gmt":"2009-08-30T01:30:03","slug":"sunday_london_times-revealed_lockerbie_link_to_oil_exploration_deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=14701","title":{"rendered":"Sunday (London) Times&#8211;Revealed: Lockerbie link to oil exploration deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The British government decided it was \u201cin the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom\u201d\u009d to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.<\/p>\n<p>Gordon Brown\u2019s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<p>The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/politics\/article6814939.ece\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British government decided it was \u201cin the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom\u201d\u009d to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal. Gordon Brown\u2019s government made the decision after discussions<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=14701\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,50,143,199,144,114,203,151,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-defense-national-security-military","category-england-uk","category-foreign-relations","category-law-legal-issues","category-middle-east","category-politics-in-general","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}