Libyan Oil Buys Release Lockerbie Bomber

LONDON (WSJ) — New statements by a top U.K. official and one of the country’s largest oil companies fed speculation by opposition politicians and victims’ families that the recent release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber is entangled with the country’s pursuit of oil interests in Libya.

Oil giant BP PLC said it lobbied the U.K. in late 2007 over a controversial prisoner-transfer agreement with Libya, and oil-rich Qatar lobbied Scotland on the case in June. On Saturday, U.K. Justice Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that, in 2007, wider trade issues involving oil played a part in leaving Abdel Baset al-Megrahi out of the prisoner-swap agreement that was being negotiated at the time between the U.K and Libya.

BP said Friday it told the U.K. government two years ago it was concerned that a delay in concluding a prisoner-transfer agreement with the Libyan government might hurt a $900 million oil deal it had just signed with the North African state in May 2007.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi speaks to a doctor at a hospital in Tripoli, shortly after his release last September. (AFP/Getty Images)

Mark Allen, a special adviser to BP who played a prominent role as a chief U.K. negotiator in talks that led to Libya’s renunciation of its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, called Mr. Straw, the U.K. justice secretary, in October 2007 to discuss the slow progress on a transfer deal.

Mark Allen left MI6 because of the misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war