How sick, in fact, is Megrahi today? A recent report from Sky News quoted an unnamed Libyan hospital source suggesting his condition may be deteriorating. But the real answer, it seems, is a closely guarded secret.
My efforts to find out were unsuccessful but illuminating. As with the initial controversy surrounding Megrahi’s release—apparently a prerequisite for a lucrative oil exploration deal between British Petroleum and the Libyan government, with top British government officials and Scottish authorities dodging accountability and heaping blame on one another after the fact —there’s an impressive amount of bureaucratic buck-passing.
A British embassy official in Washington directed me to phone the Scottish government in Edinburgh. There, a Scottish official advised me to contact the East Renfrewshire Council. Unbelievably, the municipal authorities of this Glasgow suburb, where Megrahi had been serving his time in a two-room cell with a television set and a prayer area, are responsible for monitoring his health in Libya, thousands of miles away, and enforcing the conditions of his compassionate release—when not dealing with rubbish collection and pothole repair, of course…
It seems absurd to believe that the East Renfrewshire Council has the means to make good on such conditions, and the terrorist’s health status is decidedly not public information. “I can’t talk about that,” Barbour told me. “The privacy of the client’s medical details must be respected. It doesn’t matter who he is. It’s the same for him or any other client.”
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