Reports are swirling about the potential release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted by a Scottish court in the Netherlands for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 270 when it went down over Lockerbie. Reports in the British press, denied by British authorities, suggest Al-Megrahi will be released from Scotland, ostensibly to serve out the remainder of his life sentence in Colonel Gadhafi's Libya, but in fact to enjoy the rest of his life as a hero in his homeland. The speculation is that the deal was cut by Prime Minister Blair on a trip to Tripoli last week that was also marked by the announcement of a $900 million oil investment deal between the British petroleum company BP and Libya's National Oil Company.

Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora, was killed in the bombing, called us yesterday. "This is the end of justice," she said. Releasing Megrahi would be despicable, but at this point it fits the pattern of successive administrations. The State Department has touted a diplomatic deal that left the real mastermind of the Pan Am bombing and other terror attacks on Americans, Colonel Gadhafi himself, in power. If Colonel Gadhafi gets away, why not Megrahi? It would be a grim coda not only for the Bush administration but for its Democratic critics, who favor the kind of diplomacy the we used to deal with an act of war that should have been met with force.

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