Worth a shot, no? It’s not like the guy received a hero’s welcome when he stepped off the plane last year, making him precisely the sort of perverse symbol of national pride that crackpot dictators crave.

I’m sure Gadaffi will be reasonable.

John Brennan, Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, criticised the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision.”

He said: “We’ve expressed our strong conviction that Al Megrahi should serve out the remainder – the entirety – of his sentence in a Scottish prison.”…

The bomber returned to jubilant scenes in Libya on August 20 last year after being released from a Scottish prison. Today he remains alive – despite being given three months to live at the time of his release.

The estimated life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time or less to live.

Yeah, about that life expectancy: Not only is Megrahi currently “in good condition,” but as of April, he was making a “remarkable recovery.” Ever wonder how it could be that a guy wasting away with cancer might suddenly rebound like that? Well, wonder no longer:

The Lockerbie bomber refused chemotherapy in a Scottish prison in an attempt to make his condition deteriorate and force his release, it was claimed on Friday…

Notes of a meeting on July 22 last year, which have been released by the Scottish Government, report that doctors told Al Megrahi that he needed to take his medication regularly suggesting that he had been skipping doses that would have improved his health. Just days later, his condition began to undergo such a dramatic deterioration that it appears to have been the deciding factor in the release.

The disclosure raises questions over whether Al Megrahi made a calculated risk to refuse his medication so he would appear more frail just weeks before the decision to release him was made.

So he risked his life in order to game the doctors into thinking his life expectancy was shorter than it was, thereby bringing him into range for compassionate release under Scottish law. I don’t know whether to be angry or to simply marvel at his nerve. Wait, let me think. Yep — angry.