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A few days ago when Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan secret service agent, had been sentenced to life in prison for the Lockerbie bombing, was released, he received a hero’s welcome at the Tripoli Airport. Prior to 9/11, Qaddafi was considered the world’s number one terrorist; it is likely that he was behind a number of other bombings and assassinations, such as the bombing of a disco in Berlin that killed several American servicemen.

An article published in the Financial Times in January 2008 (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/234e1d54-cf88-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac.html) discusses the conditions for freeing the Bulgarian nurses. Qaddafi wanted to have Megrahi freed from the Scottish prison where he was serving a life sentence. British Petroleum negotiated part of the deal in which they would receive oil exploration rights in Libya in exchange for nearly one billion dollars and their help in getting the Megrahi released from prison.
My goal in pointing all this out is that these news stories were distant and far apart. The story from this week didn’t even mention British Petroleum’s involvement.

All along Qaddafi’s goal was to acquire several billion dollars from wherever he could (mainly from corporations interested in Libya), to pay the diyya. Eventually when he agreed to the settlement and “declared weapons of mass destruction” (he had none), the embargo was removed and diplomatic relations with the U.S. were restored.

http://standartnews.com/en/article.php?d=2007-04-12&article=4171