The British government has published documents relating to the release of the Lockerbie bomber today after reports said he was freed early to help secure lucrative business deals with Libya.
The Ministry of Justice and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office published eleven letters dated from June 12th 2007 to 3rd August 2009.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi's release and transfer from a Scottish jail last month angered the US government and many relatives of the 270 people killed in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
One of the letters, dated 3 July 2009 published on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, says “the decision in relation to such a request is a matter for Scottish Ministers”.
The latest letter, dated 3 August 2009, says Foreign Office officials were “not making representations on whether Mr Megrahi ought to be transferred to Libya”.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he had talked to Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy about the case at the G8 summit in Italy in July where he told him that any decision on Megrahi's early release would be taken in Edinburgh.
"I made it absolutely clear to him then that this was not a decision ... that we as the United Kingdom could take. It was a matter for the Scottish Executive, and it was their decision, and their decision alone that would decide it," Mr Brown said in an interview in today's Financial Times.
Downing Street had no comment on the release of the Lockerbie papers. Spokeswomen for both the British and Scottish justice ministries said the documents would be released on their websites this afternoon.
Scotland's devolved government, which has had control over many areas of Scottish policy for the past decade, said Megrahi was freed early because he has terminal cancer which could kill him within three months.
The Scottish Government says it will also publish documents it says will justify the decision to release the Libyan on compassionate grounds.
However, newspapers reported that Britain put pressure on Scotland to free the former Libyan agent to improve business ties with Libya, home to Africa's biggest oil reserves.
The Sunday Timespublished a leaked letter saying it was in Britain's "overwhelming interests" for Megrahi not to be left out of a prisoner transfer deal signed by London and Tripoli.
The leaked letter from Mr Straw to the Scottish Government was written in 2007 when talks were also under way about an oil exploration contract for BP in Libya.
Mr Straw said he had not been able to secure Megrahi's exclusion from the prisoner transfer agreement - and "wider negotiations" were reaching a critical stage.
However, Mr Straw has insisted it was "simple nonsense" to suggest that there had been any kind of "backdoor deal" to release Megrahi.
If proved, the allegations would further damage Britain's relations with the United States and represent a "betrayal of everything Britain stands for", Conservative leader David Cameron wrote in the London Timestoday.
Mr Cameron said the affair was a fiasco and it was "becoming harder to believe" that London played no role in Megrahi's release.
Scots are evenly divided over the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber on humanitarian grounds, a poll by Ipsos MORI Scotland for Thomson Reuters showed.
Agencies