Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat- A health official at the Tripoli Medical Center in the Libyan capital said Thursday that the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdul Baset al Megrahi, who was released by the Scottish authorities recently based on compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, can no longer talk.
The medical official told Asharq Al-Awsat by phone that al Megrahi’s health is “deteriorating and he is unable to talk but he can still recognize his relatives who are being allowed to visit him.”
The health official added, “What I can say is that he has stopped talking.” He indicated that the reason al Megrahi has been kept in the medical center is because his “immune system is weak and because he is in strong need of intensive medical care.”
Mohammed Ali al Megrahi, Abdul Baset al Megrahi’s eldest brother, said that his brother’s health condition “is critical and deteriorating but he will get through it with his determination.” He stated that Abdul Baset stays in one of the health center’s rooms so that he can receive drugs on a regular basis. He told Asharq Al-Awsat from the Libyan capital of Tripoli Thursday that Abdul Baset’s family took him to hospital four days ago so that tests could be carried out; however doctors felt that the he should remain in hospital. Mohammed al Megrahi added that the family was visiting Abdul Baset on a daily basis. “His brothers, his young children and his wife all go to see him at the hospital on a daily basis to check up on him.”
Asked whether his family was thinking about moving him outside of the country for treatment, Mohamed al Megrahi said that everything his brother needed medically was available in Libya. “I do not believe that there is a need to take him out of Libya. He is being seen to by senior Libyan and Egyptian doctors as well as visiting medical experts.”
Mohamed al Megrahi said finally, “I have a lot of hope that my brother will pull through this. Yes he is in a critical and deteriorating condition but his entire family has a lot of hope that he will he recover. He will get through this ordeal just as he got through the past ten years that he spent imprisoned in a Scottish jail.”