Scottish letters reveal Libyan pressure?

The correspondence on Lockerbie supports the story that the government U-turned on whether al-Megrahi should be excluded from a prisoner transfer agreement or not.

The letters have already been selectively leaked – they’re now all there on the Foreign and Commonwealth, Ministry of Justice and  Scottish government websites.

More interesting perhaps is something about to come out in the Scottish Executive bundle of documents. 

On 12th March 2009 the Libyan Minister for Europe told Scottish officials that he had been assured by Bill Rammell, Foreign Office Minister, that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary did not want to see Mr al-Megrahi die in a Scottish prison.

It is, of course, a Libyan account of a meeting (that happened in February 2009) but it will arouse a lot of interest.

The Libyan Europe Minister also says that he warned Mr Rammell in February 2009 of the “catastrophic consequences” to relations between Britain and Libya if Mr Megrahi died in a Scottish prison – a flavour there, perhaps, of the sort of pressure that the UK government felt it was under?