Libyan Defector Faces Lockerbie Questions

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Scottish prosecutors have requested an interview with Moussa Koussa over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, following the Libyan foreign minister's apparent defection to Britain.

"We have notified the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the Scottish prosecuting and investigating authorities wish to interview Mr Kussa in connection with the Lockerbie bombing," a Crown Office spokesman said.

"The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing remains open and we will pursue all relevant lines of inquiry."

Mr Koussa, a former head of Libyan intelligence and one-time member of leader Col Muammar Gaddafi's inner circle, arrived unexpectedly in Britain on Wednesday and said he was resigning as foreign minister, the Foreign Office said.

His arrival was welcomed by relatives of those killed in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988, which killed 270 people and which Kussa has been suspected of involvement.

Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001 and sent to a Scottish jail, although he was released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 because he was suffering from terminal cancer.