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US senators may quiz Mandelson in probe into BP role in Lockerbie case

Lord Mandelson may be among the high-profile witnesses called to appear before US senators to respond to allegations that pressure from BP played a role in the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.

Congressional investigators are considering summoning the former business secretary to hearings of the powerful Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Despite the firm denials by the British government and BP that Megrahi was released last year as part of an oil deal in Libya, the controversy is threatening to overshadow David Cameron’s meeting with President Barack Obama on his first trip to Washington as prime minister this week.

The senators have already said they want to speak to BP executives at a July 29 hearing as the outcry grows in the US over the release from a Scottish jail on health grounds of Megrahi, convicted of the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988 that killed 270, including 189 Americans.

Senior Senate staff are also considering whether to summon British politicians who they believe can throw light on the events....

Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)