The wife of convicted Lockerbie bomber Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi said in an interview published on Sunday that her husband is critically ill with cancer and slammed Scotland's authorities for not taking better care of him.
Aisha al-Megrahi spoke to the daily Oea, considered close to Seif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, after a Scottish court on Friday rejected her husband's appeal to be freed on bail because of his illness.
"Hospitals in Scotland refused to take him in because of the increased security involved in transferring him, especially the use of helicopters," Oea quoted her as saying.
And despite increased surveillance "he remains handcuffed to the bed when he is examined, which affects his morale badly," she added.
Megrahi, a 56-year-old Libyan former intelligence officer, is serving life with a minimum term of 27 years for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York over Scotland on the night of December 21, 1988.
The blast killed all 259 on board, and 11 people on the ground were killed by falling debris. His lawyers applied for his interim release after announcing last month that he has prostate cancer which has spread to other parts of his body.