Son of Lockerbie bomber says Britain 'opened door to terrorists' and brought Manchester attack on itself

The son of the Lockerbie bomber has warned that Britain faces an unprecedented wave of terror attacks from Libya, as he claimed the UK brought the Manchester attack on itself.   

Khaled al-Megrahi said his country had become a rich recruiting ground for terrorists and that there was “only a sea” between them and Europe.   

Mr Megrahi, whose father Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the only man ever convicted of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, said Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) exploited the power vacuum left after the West helped to depose Colonel Moammar Gaddafi in 2011.  

They were then allowed to grow due to Britain and its allies' "inaction".

The comments came after a week after Salman Abedi, 22, carried out a suicide attack at a pop concert at Manchester Arena, leaving 22 dead and dozens injured.  

The son of Libyan parents who were granted refuge from Gaddafi in the UK in the early 1990s, he is thought to have come back to Britain from Libya just days before the massacre.  

Speaking from his home in the Libyan capital Tripoli, Mr Megrahi said: “It was Manchester but tomorrow it will be some other place.  

“The militants will kill each other here and then come to each city in the west.   “A lot of Libyans are hungry, have no money and no justice. If the West continues its stance you will see a lot of the militants coming to the UK.”   

Britain joined a coalition of countries bombing Libya in support of the opposition in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.   

A parliamentary report last year found that the military intervention, ordered by former Prime Minister David Cameron, relied on flawed intelligence and hastened the North African country's political and economic collapse.  

Mr Megrahi urged the West to resume air strikes on the militants to curb the country’s growing extremist networks.  

“The West knows what's happening in Libya but they only want to watch and see.

“You make Libya like this. You will see a lot of terrorists in the UK and everywhere.”

Mr Megrahi senior was convicted of planting the bomb which brought down a plane over Lockerbie, killing 270 people. He was released from a Scottish jail in 2009 on compassionate grounds because of cancer.  

Mr Megrahi, 32, has continued to try to clear his father’s name after his death in 2012 aged 60.  

He added: “It was easy for them to do it in 2011 and it would be easy to do it again.  

“This time they should arm the army and not arm the militias.”