It Pays To Be A Foreigner...Sort Of

Susan Atkins is dying: terminal brain cancer has left her unable to sit up since she is paralyzed over 85% of her body. She will, no doubt, die sometime soon...though too soon for some and, perhaps, not soon enough for others.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi is also terminally ill, destined to be pushing up daisies in the somewhat near future...prostate cancer, I think, but I'm not sure. He, too has suppporters and detractors.
So, what's the common thread for these two folks? A place in history: Atkins became known worldwide in 1969 when, at age 21, she stabbed pregnant actress Sharon Tate 16 times despite horrifying pleas for mercy; known to the Manson family as "Sadie Mae Gluzz," Atkins wrote "pig" in blood over the doorway in the murder room.
She's since become a "model" prisoner, shuns Charles Manson and everything about her former life,and has a website updated by her husband James Whitehouse (just in case you are interested in her story).
al-Megrahi remains the only person convicted in the Pan Am disater over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. To my limited knowledge, he has never acknowledged remorse over the dead, and Libyans certainly feted him as a conquering hero when he was released by an English court a while ago.
That's the difference:
In this country, Susan Atkins will die in prison while al-Megrahi will die in the comfort of his home.
Maybe there are international implications here, but the only ones I can find have to do with Libyan oil for Great Britain...mind you, the Scottish governing body refused his "parole," only to be overruled by John Bull. Detail after detail continue to emerge as I read the London Telegraph, and it does seem just a bit too fishy, and there is outrage a'plenty.
Maybe if Atkins were a foreigner, things would be diffeent. I mean, all it took was Bill Clinton to get two reporters released from a torturous vacation in a North Korean work camp.
Still...it just doesn't seem right.