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EDINBURGH, June 10 (AFP) - South African former president Nelson Mandela was to be in Scotland Monday to visit Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing and sentenced to life in prison in January 2001, the Scottish authorities announced.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said late Sunday: "We understand that Mr. Mandela is arriving at Barlinnie to visit Al Megrahi tomorrow morning."

A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman confirmed that security arrangements were in place for Mandela visiting Glasgow.

Mandela was to examine the conditions of Megrahi's detention at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow.

The Scottish Prison Service said it could not comment on the visit. "We don't discuss visits to individual prisoners," said a spokeswoman.

Last week Mandela's spokeswoman Zelda Lagrange had announced that he wanted to travel to Scotland. She said: "Mr. Mandela has been closely involved in the case and he wants to see how the prisoner is doing and what the conditions in the prison are like."

The former president had also been in touch with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi about Megrahi's case, she added.

Mandela, who spent more than 20 years in prison under the apartheid regime, played a crucial role in persuading Libya to hand over the two men suspected of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. The second suspect, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted by a Scottish court set up in the Netherlands.

The bombing, blamed on the Libyan intelligence services, destroyed a Pan Am plane flying from Frankfurt to New York in December 1988. It exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland killing 270 people including the 259 on board the aircraft and 11 on the ground. - Nampa-AFP

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