"Terminally ill" Lockerbie bomber can live on for a decade.

Of course. But there seems to be a worrying undercurrent that the feelings of victims' families should be given undue weight largely because they are American, not because they are victims. This is quite bizarre.

I don't think the nationality should make a difference, I think the point was there were considerably more of them. I believe that a member claimed that some Scottish victim families thought the release was ok, as if them being Scottish gave them more weight in the matter.

Some British relatives of the victims believe Megrahi was only a small part of the terrorist plot, while others believe he should not have been convicted at all.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, said he had never been convinced that Megrahi had carried out the bombing.

"The sooner he is back with his family, the better," he said.

"On reasonable human grounds it is the right thing to do.

"If it's true that he is to be returned on compassionate grounds, then that would be more to Scotland's credit than returning him under the prison transfer agreement."

Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill, would also support Megrahi's release.

He said: "I think he is innocent and even if he were not innocent, I still think it's the right thing to do on compassionate grounds."

Lockerbie resident Maxwell Kerr, who witnessed the devastation caused by the bombing, said he was also in favour of Megrahi being freed.

"As far as I'm concerned he should be released on compassionate grounds," he told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme.

So 2 relatives that thought Magraghi wasn't the right man to begin with. The third was just a bystander, so doesn't count.

That's not the many that you claimed. We've moved past that, but I really appreciate that you took the time to find it. Thank you.

If the criterion is that the prisoner not be (medically) expected to live for more than 3 years, then his living beyond 3 years does not imply that the criterion is not met. Only a revelation that this was not a truthful expert estimation can do that.

That's months, Gokul, not years.

And you're splitting hairs. Again, I'm not claiming the judge knowingly did anything wrong: as far as the information in front of him said, the criteria was met. But the fact that the prisoner has lived much longer than 3 months means that the prediction was wrong. It's logically the same as making any other decision based on a wrong fact. Whether the judge knew it was wrong or not isn't really relevant: it was still wrong.

But the fact that the prisoner has lived much longer than 3 months means that the prediction was wrong. It's logically the same as making any other decision based on a wrong fact.

No, it's not, Russ (that is, going by my best guess of what a "wrong fact" is). These are probabilistic models we are talking about. Whatever, the determined time period was, is usually associated with some confidence level (at least in principle). One can only predict expectancies to say, a 90% confidence, or a 99% confidence or whatever. The nature of such a situation requires that some percentage of any sufficiently large sample set outlive the prediction.

Or, as NeoDevin puts it:"Statistics: There are always outliers."

While what you are saying is correct, I feel like you are looking at the trees and missing the forest. The Judge was in no way obligated to let him go (as far as my understanding goes), and therefore this was a horribly poor political decision by the Judges.

Politics shouldn't come into it. This is a legal court, and the judge is obliged to make an unbiased decision based on Scots law. The only question (in my opinion) is whether it was the correct decision in the context of Scots law.

Edit: And from a more cynical point of view - if the release was politically motivated (as some have suggested), then it was probably not a poor political decision. If this were the case then presumably the oil deals with Libya were considered more important than some negative press in America.

While what you are saying is correct, I feel like you are looking at the trees and missing the forest. The Judge was in no way obligated to let him go (as far as my understanding goes), and therefore this was a horribly poor political decision by the Judges.

Politics shouldn't come into it. This is a legal court, and the judge is obliged to make an unbiased decision based on Scots law. The only question (in my opinion) is whether it was the correct decision in the context of Scots law.

Edit: And from a more cynical point of view - if the release was politically motivated (as some have suggested), then it was probably not a poor political decision. If this were the case then presumably the oil deals with Libya were considered more important than some negative press in America.

This ain't America, what SCTOUS has no role here, and, BTW, SCTOUS does not make law, so "SCOTUS LAW" is meaningless.

Lol took me a while to work out what you were talking about here. You might find this helpful - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_law.

LONDON — The oil giant BP faced a new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

The admission came after American legislators, grappling with the controversy over the company’s disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, called for an investigation into BP’s actions in the case of the freed man, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi....

BP’s statement on Thursday repeated earlier acknowledgments that it had promoted the transfer agreement to protect a $900 million offshore oil-and-gas exploration deal off Libya’s Mediterranean coast. The British justice minister at the time, Jack Straw, admitted shortly after Mr. Megrahi was repatriated and freed that the BP deal was a consideration in the government’s review of his case.