Triumphal Return of Lockerbie Bomber Criticized

British and Scottish officials joined the United States on Friday in criticizing the way Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, was welcomed home in Tripoli as a hero late Thursday after the Scottish government ordered his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

President Barack Obama himself had strongly opposed the Scottish decision to free Mr. Megrahi on the grounds that he was dying of prostate cancer and had only months to live. Less than three hours after the decision was announced, Mr. Megrahi was on his way home aboard a jet sent from Tripoli.

His release drew outrage from the families of some of those who died when a bomb smuggled on board Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. Of the dead, 189 were Americans.

News reports Friday said Mr. Megrahi would meet in person with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader who has long sought the convict’s freedom and who is preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew King Idris and brought him to power on Sept. 1, 1969. Western officials said they feared Col. Qaddafi would parade Mr. Megrahi at those celebrations as the emblem of a diplomatic triumph.

Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, criticized Mr. Megrahi’s hero’s welcome in Tripoli, during which hundreds of young Libyans waved Scottish flags, saying on Friday that he did not believe it was “appropriate.” 

And David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, said Libya’s handling of Mr. Megrahi’s return home would “be very significant in the way the world sees Libya’s re-entry into the civilized community of nations” after its earlier years as a pariah state. 

Mr. Miliband also took issue with the way Mr. Megrahi was welcomed. “The sight of a mass murder getting a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply disturbing especially for the 270 families and also for anyone who has got an ounce of humanity in them,” he said.