Lockerbie bomber should be back in jail, says US

THE White House has told Scottish Ministers that they should return the Lockerbie bomber to jail in Scotland, amid fresh calls for a full public inquiry into his conviction and subsequent release.

John Brennan, counter-terrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, said Washington had expressed "strong conviction" to officials in Edinburgh over what he described as the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to free Abdelbaset Al Megrahi.

That followed condemnation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said on Friday that the decision by Scottish ministers to let him go on compassionate grounds was "indefensible". Megrahi, who is suffering from prostate cancer, was given only three months to live but the first anniversary of his release passed on Friday.

US anger over the decision is now set to rumble on in the form of a US Senate inquiry, led by the Foreign Relations Committee .

But campaigners who believe in Megrahi's innocence are now arguing that the backlash over his freeing should not obscure more fundamental questions surrounding his conviction.

It came as it emerged that the Egyptian-born terrorist Mohammed Abu Talb - the man many suspect as the real figure behind the bomb - was released from jail in Sweden.

Michael Mansfield QC, one of the country's best-known defence lawyers, said a full judicial inquiry was required to settle the doubts over the case. Mansfield said he had no doubt that the evidence given to secure Megrahi's conviction was "entirely unsustainable".