Senate Panel to Hold Hearing on Lockerbie Bomber's Prison Release

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced Thursday it will hold a hearing on the Lockerbie bomber's release from prison last year.

The hearing has been scheduled for July 29 and will look into the circumstances surrounding the release of Abdel Bassett Mohamed al-Megrahi, who was convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 to New York -- an attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, 180 of them Americans.

Al-Megrahi's release last year from a Scottish prison on "compassionate" grounds after doctors estimated he had only three months to live has come under suspicion following a report that the cancer-stricken Libyan could live another decade.

"I opposed Megrahi's release on medical grounds last year as a travesty, and the details that have emerged in recent days in the press have raised new concerns," Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the committee, said in a written statement.

The four senators from New York and New Jersey have been seeking an investigation and have called on BP to suspend its oil drilling plans in Libya until it can be determined whether the oil giant played any role in Al-Megrahi' release in exchange for a contract.