A prostate cancer specialist has said that advances in treatment for the disease mean the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing could remain alive for years.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison almost a year ago on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The decision has been defended by the Scottish Government who said a report compiled by Scottish Prison Service (SPS) director of health and care Andrew Fraser concluded that a three-month prognosis was a reasonable estimate.
Professor Roger Kirby, a consultant urologist at St George`s Hospital in London, told Channel 4 news that new treatments for prostate cancer mean patients can live for much longer than in the past.
He told the news programme that chemotherapy has been known to extend the lives of patients by up to three years.
The professor said: "There are new therapies coming in all the time. There's chemotherapy which al-Megrahi is on in Libya, there are other new things ... these are improving survival rates on these patients really quite dramatically, so it was a big mistake to let him out on the premise that he would be dead within three months."
He added: "We know that patients can survive 18, 24, 36 months longer as a result of these treatments."
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