Martin Hannan: Why Megrahi remains alive

I know Kenny MacAskill. I am a member of the same SNP constituency association as him. I told Kenny last year in this column that I thought he had made a mistake and that he should have detained Megrahi until he was at death's door.

Kenny is a lawyer and knew precedent meant Megrahi had to be treated like any murderer and given compassionate release as medical experts said the Libyan had less than three months to live. I didn't agree with him, but I admired the Justice Secretary for taking a difficult decision.

A year on, Megrahi is still alive. I am going to suggest how he has managed it and why it proves his guilt.

Last week, Scottish Television broadcast an excellent documentary on Megrahi called The Lockerbie Bomber: Sent Home to Die. It contained one devastating revelation - that prior to his release, Megrahi refused various treatments, including chemotherapy.

I know the experienced STV journalists involved in the documentary, particularly chief reporter David Cowan and Donald John MacDonald. Their sources were cast iron - Megrahi was adamant that he would not accept the correct chemotherapy treatment for his advanced prostate cancer.

At that time, the drug Taxotere (docetaxel) was licensed in Britain for use in such cases. It is proven to prolong life, but cannot cure the patient of prostate cancer.

Megrahi could have taken Taxotere but he would have stayed in Greenock prison. In refusing Taxotere and all other chemotherapies, Megrahi was gambling with his life. He knew that since he was refusing treatment, doctors would have to say he had only a short time to live. He also knew that if he went home to Libya, the government there would get him the best drugs available to prolong his life.

At the weekend, some newspapers claimed Megrahi was back on chemotherapy with a new "wonder drug" called Taxotere, which is so "new" it's been licensed for use in Britain since June 2006. It was also reported earlier that Megrahi was already on Taxotere, and was responding to treatment.

Yet I have reason to believe that Megrahi is indeed on a new drug, one that we've not heard about in Britain. The drug is cabazitaxel which is marketed under the trade name Jevtana by the same firm which developed Taxotere, Sanofi-Aventis of France.

Jevtana was specifically developed for patients who have already had Taxotere. Again, it cannot cure advanced prostate cancer, but clinical trials show it can prolong life by an average of 15 months. Jevtana was licensed for use in America in June, and no doubt the Libyan government either already had a supply or has since acquired it from the US. In Britain, it won't be approved until at least next year.

The forthcoming arrival of Jevtana-cabazitaxel was already known about in early 2009, as can be seen on the internet. Megrahi has always been a cool, calculating and highly-intelligent individual. I believe he refused treatment in Scotland so that he could go home, take the initial Taxotere drug and then Jevtana so that he could live not just for three months, but perhaps two years. For if he is now on Jevtana, he could expect to live to late 2011.

I cannot prove this, as I do not have access to Megrahi's medical records in Libya. But my sources know about advanced prostate cancer and Jevtana, and say it is the only drug that could be keeping Megrahi alive now.

So, no BP conspiracy theory, no abuse of judicial process, not even a cock-up. Just a fiercely-determined killer who deduced that if he refused treatment he could go home and get access to a life-prolonging drug that most UK doctors haven't heard of.

There is a conspiracy in all this. It is the conspiracy by a disparate group of people to "prove" that Megrahi is innocent of the crime of planting the bomb on board PanAm 103.

While he may or may not have personally put the suitcase into the hold, I have no doubt that Megrahi, whether acting alone or in concert with Libyan, Iranian and Palestinian terrorists, was wholly or partly responsible for the bomb being on board the aircraft. The Scottish police evidence to his trial about the physical make-up of the bomb was utterly convincing, and effectively convicted Megrahi. I know the cops involved are furious about conspirators' pathetic claims that the CIA or FBI conned them.

The only person doing any conning was and is Megrahi, who is devious, treacherous and guilty. For if he was truly innocent, Megrahi would have taken the chemotherapy in Britain and lived to fight his case, which he might well have won. Instead, he abandoned his appeal and got what he wanted - the freedom to take better chemotherapy and live longer so that he could go on protesting his innocence in Libya.

Megrahi is a schemer. He conned his way out of jail and conned plenty people into thinking he is innocent. The mere fact that he is still breathing proves his duplicity, and thus his guilt.