{"id":20930,"date":"2010-07-26T03:27:26","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T03:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/white_house_backed_release_of_lockerbie_bomber_abdel_baset_al-megrahi\/"},"modified":"2010-07-26T03:27:26","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T03:27:26","slug":"white_house_backed_release_of_lockerbie_bomber_abdel_baset_al-megrahi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=20930","title":{"rendered":"White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be &#8220;far preferable&#8221; to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.<\/p>\n<p>Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.<\/p>\n<p>The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.<\/p>\n<p>The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama&#8217;s claim last week that all Americans were &#8220;surprised, disappointed and angry&#8221; to learn of Megrahi&#8217;s release.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/world\/white-house-backed-release-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi\/story-e6frg6so-1225896741041\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be &#8220;far preferable&#8221; to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya. Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=20930\">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":[40,50,209,143,199,144,326,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-americau-s-a","category-defense-national-security-military","category-england-uk","category-foreign-relations","category-scotland","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20930","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=20930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}