LITTLE ROCK — As U.S. senators and BP executives wrangle over hearings to explore the oil company’s possible involvement in the release of a Libyan convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, victims’ families in Arkansas are divided on the need for BP to testify.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released by Scotland, whose judiciary is independent from Great Britain’s, last August on compassionate grounds because he was said to be dying of prostate cancer.
Al-Megrahi is still alive, and opponents of his release say he could live for a long time. They say the architect of a terrorist act that killed 270 people should have died behind bars.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had scheduled a hearing for Thursday but canceled it after BP chief executive Tony Hayward declined to appear.
Melvin Bell - whose 9-year old daughter Stacy Stinnett died when a bomb downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 - said he’s unsettled by the allegations that BP might have lobbied for al-Megrahi’s release as a way to gain an oil-drilling concession from Libya.
“I don’t think any of that stuff should have figured into it,” Bell said Tuesday.
Bell, 60, who lives in Y City in Scott County, said he was still angry about al-Megrahi’s August 2009 release.
“I feel like it’s an outrage. He should never have been released,” Bell said. “The man was brought to justice and he should have served out his full sentence. I hope he lives a long time, but I would have preferred it to be behind bars.”
Chester Phillips, the father of Frederick Sanford “Sandy” Phillips who also died in the bombing, had a different take.
“I don’t think necessarily that BP really had anything to do with it,” Phillips said. The 76-year-old Little Rock resident said he was depressed about his son’s tragic death for many years but never had a lot of anger toward the terrorists.
“That happened and my son is gone, and there is nothing I can do about bringing him back. And I believe in forgiveness,” Phillips said Tuesday.
Phillips attends St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, passing by his son’s columbarium marker there regularly. Sandy Phillips was 27 years old when he died.
Sandy Phillips’ mother, Caroline Stevenson, declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, blasted Hayward for his comment to reporters that he was too busy to attend the hearing.
“It must be nice to be too ‘busy’ negotiating a multimillion-dollar golden parachuteto ignore a U.S. Senate hearing examining whether Mr. Hayward’s company traded blood for oil,” Menendez told Agence France-Presse.
Menendez said he will formally ask Hayward to provide a date in September to testify before the panel.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 07/30/2010