The man who took the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber from jail on compassionate grounds accused him yesterday of breaking an undertaking not to celebrate his release.

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, had shown “no sensitivity” to the families of those who died, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, told the Scottish Parliament. It was the first time that Scotland’s Nationalist administration has joined the condemnation of the triumphal scenes.

Aware that Britain is caught in the cross-hairs of international outrage, Gordon Brown is expected today to urge Libya not to fête al-Megrahi further. Appearing before the cameras for the first time in weeks, Mr Brown will hold talks at No 10 with Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, before taking questions from the press. Although Mr Brown is expected to issue a robust defence of his “principled decision” that the release was a matter only for the devolved Scottish government, diplomatic efforts are being made to restore Britain’s battered credibility among allies, including the US.

Amid a rumble of accusations that Britain connived at the release in return for trade deals with oil-rich Libya, aides said last night that Mr Brown was likely to disclose how he had demanded assurances from Tripoli that al-Megrahi would not be fêted in the celebrations on Tuesday to mark the 40th anniversary of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power.

Officials in the Libyan Government had boasted previously that al-Megrahi would be the “main guest”.

Mr Brown is facing accusations from all sides, including Labour, that he has been ducking a subject of international importance while being able to offer his views on England’s Ashes victory. Tom Harris, a former minister, pointed out that there was nothing in the Scotland Act to prevent a Prime Minister from commenting on a decision by the Edinburgh government.

In Mr MacAskill’s statement yesterday to the Holyrood Parliament he said that the jubilation that greeted al-Megrahi in Libya, which included waving Scottish flags, was “a matter of great regret” to him. Libya had flouted assurances to the Scottish government that al-Megrahi would be given a muted reception in Tripoli, he said.

Mr MacAskill included al-Megrahi himself in his condemnation, saying that the man whom he had released on compassionate grounds because he was suffering from terminal cancer had shown “no sensitivity” by being a willing part of the triumphalist scenes.

He had been received in Tripoli in “an inappropriate manner”, Mr MacAskill said. “It showed no compassion or sensitivity to the families of the 270 victims of Lockerbie. Assurances had been given by the Libyan Government that any return would be dealt with in a low-key and sensitive fashion.”

Mr MacAskill gave a defiant if uninspiring performance before MSPs, sidestepping questions by saying simply that he stood by his decision. At Holyrood last night he was thought to have done enough for the moment to stop talk of his imminent resignation.

However, the pressure on him will intensify again next week. Moves to try to force him to step down are under way. Opposition parties have succeeded in their move to hold a full debate on the decision at Holyrood a week on Wednesday. Unlike yesterday’s statement, there will be a vote.

If the Parliament, as expected, votes to dissociate itself from the decision, it would be seen widely as tantamount to a vote of no confidence. If Mr MacAskill had to quit it would leave a question-mark over the future of Alex Salmond’s minority administration: the First Minister has said that the passing of a vote of no-confidence in any of his ministers would mean his entire administration stepping down.

In his statement, Mr MacAskill repeatedly rejected claims that he mishandled the affair, saying that he had exercised the principle of compassion inherent in the Scottish judicial system.

His main area of difficulty came in questions on his having visited al-Megrahi in prison two weeks before the decision was announced. The move has prompted claims that he used the visit to strike a deal with the Libyan that would see him drop his appeal in return for release. Mr MacAskill said that he was “duty bound” to meet al-Megrahi to hear his representations.

Iain Gray, the Labour leader at Holyrood, pointed out that Jack Straw, the British Justice Secretary, had advised Mr MacAskill that written representations from the prisoner were sufficient.

Mr MacAskill, who pledged to publish correspondence leading to his decision, said that al-Megrahi’s withdrawal of his appeal was “a matter for him and him alone” and that he himself had not “interfered”. He rejected claims that al-Megrahi could have been released into a hospital or hospice in Scotland as “ludicrous” given the security that would have been required.

At Tripoli's foreign media office yesterday Abdul Majeed el-Dursi, the chairman, was charm personified. Britain and America had "misinterpreted" the rapturous welcome given to al-Megrahi on his return, he said.

There was no gloating — just joyful relatives welcoming back one of their own in the Libyan custom. "This is something that can't be understood by people in the West," he said. "This was their son who had been away for ten years. Definitely they had to receive him despite the fact that everybody in Libya sympathises with what happened to people in Lockerbie."

Mr el-Dursi insisted that al-Megrahi was innocent — convicted by a court with a political agenda — and that Libya could never have pulled off a such a sophisticated terrorist attack. Britain and Libya were entering a "new chapter of cooperation" and it was time to move on, he said.

"We are going forward with an open heart and good intentions, and you see how many western leaders and western companies are coming to Libya now," he said. Mr el-Dursi denied that any deal had been struck to secure al-Megrahi's release.

President Obama’s spokesman said: “The President’s view is that ... it was disgusting to see a convicted terrorist welcomed the way he was in Libya.”

let's help the libyans celebrate by providing them with some fireworks!

British and other Western expatriates living in Libya were warned in April that they faced serious repercussions if the Lockerbie bomber died in his Scottish prison.

“Word went out that there could be reprisals . . . . We were told not to go into the centre of Tripoli,” said one of the thousands of Westerners who are helping to develop Libya’s oil and gas fields. “Everybody went ‘eek!’. It’s so unpredictable here. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It could be something or it could be nothing.”

The expats were not told what the reprisals might be were Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to die in Scotland, but the tale of a Swiss citizen called Max Goeldi may be instructive. Mr Goeldi has spent much of the past year holed up in Switzerland’s largely deserted embassy, unable to leave Libya and too frightened to set foot on the streets of Tripoli.

A visit yesterday by The Times to the high-walled embassy in a quiet residential street in the Libyan capital was interrupted at the door when two unsmiling men in a white car pulled up and asked our translator what we were doing. He fled. The men drove off when the embassy’s sole diplomat opened the gate, but the latter politely refused requests to see Mr Goeldi.

Mr Goeldi’s story — and that of the Swiss in Libya in general — demonstrates what the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi can do if angered by countries that covet its oil, gas and lucrative development contracts.

In July 2008 Swiss police arrested Colonel Gaddafi’s son Hannibal and pregnant daughter-in-law in a Geneva hotel suite after receiving reports that they had abused their two servants. Hannibal Gaddafi, 33, and his wife, Aline, spent two nights in custody and left Switzerland after being released on bail.

The Gaddafi family were furious and reprisals were swift. Two days later Mr Goeldi, a director of the Swiss engineering company ABB, was arrested at his Tripoli home, as was Rachid Hamdani, another Swiss citizen. Both were imprisoned for alleged breaches of immigration rules. They were released ten days later but banned from leaving Libya. The Swiss media described them as hostages and Mr Goeldi sought refuge in the Swiss Embassy. In the past year Libya has imposed trade sanctions, stopped Swiss flights to Tripoli, withdrawn more than $5 billion from Swiss banks and cut the crude oil exports that provide half of Switzerland’s oil.

The new Swiss Ambassador was denied a visa. Sources said that Mr Goeldi was left almost alone in the embassy, with ABB employees bringing him food. The diplomat who spoke to The Times apparently returned only recently to Tripoli, but he refused to say anything.

Last September Hannibal Gaddafi’s servants withdrew their complaint after agreeing a financial settlement but Swiss diplomatic efforts to placate Libya bore no fruit. In April Hannibal Gaddafi, his wife and the Libyan state filed a civil lawsuit against the Geneva authorities in a Geneva court.

Last Thursday, as al-Megrahi was returning from Scotland, President Merz of Switzerland flew to Tripoli and delivered an “official and public apology for the unjustified and unnecessary arrests”. He promised to have Hannibal Gaddafi’s arrest investigated by an arbitration panel. Libya promised to restore normal relations. Mr Goeldi and Mr Hamdani should soon be on their way home.

Libyan newspapers proclaimed a double triumph — and the humiliated Swiss Government was, as with Scotland’s, excoriated at home. “In this crisis Switzerland loses more than honour. The country has slowly taken stock of its powerlessness,” said the Swiss newspaper Le Temps.

Expats who have been finding it difficult to get their visas renewed hope that, with al-Megrahi’s release, the wheels of bureaucracy will turn more easily.

If those British citizens feared that the Madman of Libya would revoke his hospitality to them, and might (gasp) take reprisals against them, they should have packed their kit and gotten out of there. They should not expect our Nation to share their cowardice.

Just think, if the British of 70 years ago exhibited the same cowardice, we would all be speaking German!

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will set foot on U.S. soil for the first time next month when he comes to address the U.N. General Assembly. Now he wants to put down stakes in the middle of American suburbia.

Plans to set up a tent and allow him to stay at a Libyan-owned estate in this upscale community 12 miles north of Manhattan, were attacked Monday by neighborhood residents and public officials, particularly after the hero's welcome extended by Libya last week to the lone man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103.

The attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, thought to be the work of Libyan intelligence, killed all 259 people on board the flight, including 33 from New Jersey. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

"Gadhafi is a dangerous dictator whose hands are covered with the blood of Americans and our allies," said U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman, whose district includes Englewood. He promised there would be "hell to pay" if the U.S. State Department violates a long-standing deal barring the dictator from staying at the Libyan estate.

State department officials said no decision had been made on the issue.

Rothman was mayor of Englewood 26 years ago when the city learned the Libyan Mission to the United Nations had purchased the Palisade Avenue estate. He said local officials worked out a deal with the U.S. State Department limiting its use to the recreational activities by the ambassador and his family. The Libyans don't pay taxes on the estate, he said.

Gadhafi's U.N. appearance culminates a yearslong effort to rehabilitate the Libyan strongman's international image, which has included denouncing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. He's ruled the oil rich North African kingdom since 1969.

"This is what happens when you have the path of appeasement," Susan Cohen, of Cape May Court House, New Jersey, said of the prospect of Gadhafi staying in Englewood. "He's getting everything he wants, and I guess that includes a trip to the state of New Jersey, which certainly doesn't need this."

Cohen's 20-year-old daughter died in the Scottish bombing.

Englewood is an upscale community of 28,000 residents that's located about 12 miles north of Manhattan. About 15 percent are Jewish, according to Rothman.

Shmuley Boteach, an orthodox Jewish rabbi, family counselor and star of the mainstream television series "Shalom in the Home," lives next door to the Libyan estate. He said the mansion has been renovated over the past three months with nearly 100 people working there.

He was initially supportive of the idea of Gadhafi coming to the U.S., but that changed after the release of al-Megrahi.

"I don't want him as a neighbor," said Boteach. "The events of the past few days have changed everything. Gadhafi has shown his true colors."

Bob Monetti of Cherry Hill, N.J., whose 20-year-old son died in the bombing, said allowing Gadhafi to stay in New Jersey would make it more difficult to live with what's happened.

"When he's in his tent in the desert in Libya he's a distant character that we can hate at arm's length, but when he comes to New Jersey, it just means he's on our home turf, and we don't want him on our home turf," he said.

In Washington, U.S. officials said Englewood was one option the Libyans were looking at to pitch the tent after their request to set it up New York's Central Park had been denied due to logistics and security concerns.

"We have been talking to the U.N. about this issue, we've been talking to the New York City authorities about the issue of where Mr. Gadhafi is going to stay, but no decisions have been made," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Monday. "No decision has been made about where anybody's going to pitch a tent."

Ahmed Gebreel, a spokesman for the Libyan Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, did not return a reporter's phone call for this story.

However, Nicole DiCocco, spokeswoman for the Libyan Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed that the Libyan government owns the property in Englewood and it's a possible site for Gadhafi. She said that he would not live in the tent, but use it for entertainment purposes.

"We own the residence in Englewood, but it hasn't been confirmed that he'll be staying there," DiCocco said.

U.S. Sen Frank Lautenberg has asked the State Department to limit Gadhafi's travel in the U.S. to the U.N. headquarters district.