The council monitoring the Lockerbie bomber have been in contact with him “very recently”, a spokesperson told the Huffington Post UK on Monday.
A representative for East Renfrewshire Council said that whilst they were monitoring Abdel Baset Ali Al-Megrahi to ensure he kept to the terms of his release, they were under “no obligation” to protect him.
“Up to this point, all of the contact we expected to have, we have had. We have received monthly medical reports. All of our contact is up to date, as of Friday," said the spokesman.
But he said the council was currently trying to get in contact with Al-Megrahi: “Up until Friday, I would have said all of the contact is entirely up to date. The position at the moment is because of the situation in the city we will be looking to make contact with him sooner than we’d expected to, and the reason for that is to make sure that we can continue to make the contact we’ve had over the last two years.”
The spokesperson added that any breaches would be referred back to the parole board and the Scottish justice department, but stressed he would need permission to leave Libya.
“Our role is, because he’s been released on compassionate grounds, he’s released under certain conditions. We need to monitor him under those conditions, things like where he lives."
Scottish lawyer Derek Livingston said the change in government did not matter in “legal terms” but the Libyan transitional council may attempt to send Al-Megrahi back: “It doesn’t matter one iota that there’s been a change of government from a legal point of view. It might matter from a political perspective. In theory the Libyans could try and send him back.”
A Scottish Government Spokesperson did not comment on calls from an MP to send Al-Megrahi back to Britain, only saying: "Al-Megrahi was sent back to Libya because he is dying of terminal cancer, he is being monitored by East Renfrewshire Council according to the terms of his release licence which he has not breached."