Story highlights
The Lockerbie bombing in 1988 killed 259 people on a Pan Am plane and 11 on the ground
A police constable was shot dead in 1984 outside the Libyan Embassy in London
A British Foreign Office envoy is visiting Tripoli
Britain’s Foreign Office is hopeful that Libya’s new leaders will permit visits from police investigating the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1984 slaying of a British police officer, shot dead outside the Libyan Embassy in London.
Alistair Burt, the minister for the Middle East and North Africa, “raised the police investigations” with Libya’s interior and foreign ministers, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.
Burt arrived in Tripoli on the first visit to Libya by a UK minister since the formation of the new Libyan government, the Foreign Office said on Wednesday.
“Helping the relevant police services take forward these investigations is a priority for the British government. The Libyan Ministers acknowledged the importance of these issues,” the office said in a statement.
Burt said he was “very confident” the Libyans would permit police to visit soon, but a date has not been set.
Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was freed from a prison in Scotland in 2009 after serving eight years of a life sentence for blowing up the Pan Am jet in 1988, killing all 259 on board and 11 in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.
Doctors who had been treating him for prostate cancer gave him just three months to live, and he was released on compassionate grounds. He remains alive and in poor health.
Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot in the back outside the Libyan People’s Bureau, as the diplomatic offices were officially known, during a peaceful demonstration in 1984. London’s Metropolitan Police say the shots that killed her came from the embassy.
