Basset Hounded

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Pan Am-aniac who killed 270 people in the air and on the ground around Lockerbie, Scotland, has taken up residence in hell, finally succumbing to prostate cancer at the age of 60. The only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, Al-Megrahi was released a mere 30 months after Scottish officials had determined he had 3 months to live and granted him a compassionate release, suggesting that the Scots are either less penurious with forgiveness than they are with everything else or are as skilled in medicine as they are in tennis. After getting the third-world dictator get out of prison card, al-Megrahi was greeted in Libya with the kind of reception reserved in the United States for winners of national championships (albeit with fewer burning over-turned cars) or hometown contestants on cheesy televised karaoke competitions (albeit with fewer gazebos). The former intelligence officer was suspected to have been acting on the orders of Libyan President and Fashion Don’t Moammar Qaddafi, and his early release was suspected by many as having been tied to oil and gas concessions for Scotland, a contention not helped that then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown discussed the release at a European economic conference. Or the chain of petrol stations that opened with a turban and kilt uniform.