Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader, right, gesture on his arrival at an airport in Tripoli, Libya on Thursday. (Associated Press)

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi defended an apparent hero's welcome given to the Lockerbie bomber and praised both the Scottish and British governments for not giving in to intense pressure to keep the man jailed.

On Friday, Gadhafi welcomed Abdel Baset al-Megrahi with a hug, a televised event that is sure to fuel the debate about how Libya should be treating the man they once turned over for trial.

Al-Megrahi returned to Libya on Thursday after Scottish officials announced he was being freed on compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. The decision to free al-Megrahi after just eight years in jail has been condemned by many of the victims' families and the U.S., which has called for him to be put under house arrest.

The director of the FBI has written a scathing letter to Scotland's justice minister, saying al-Megrahi's release made "a mockery of justice" and gave comfort to terrorists around the world.

Robert Mueller, who led the U.S. Justice Department investigation into the 1988 Pan Am bombing, also sent his letter to the families of the Lockerbie victims.

In Libya's first official reaction to the controversy, Gadhafi lauded Scotland for its decision.

"To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making, despite the unacceptable and unreasonable pressures they faced. Nevertheless, they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision," he said.

Gadhafi compared al-Megrahi's return to his government's 2007 release of five Bulgarian nurses and a naturalized Palestinian doctor imprisoned on charges of deliberately infecting with HIV more than 400 Libyan children. The nurses denied the charges and said they were tortured into confessing.

The Libyan leader noted there were no such widespread concerns for the families of the infected children when the nurses returned home to a hero's welcome in their homeland.

"Do we not have feelings and they have feelings?" Gadhafi said.

Questions arise about British government influence

Gadhafi also raised questions about the influence that Britain may have had in the release by praising Prime Minister Gordon Brown and members of the royal family by name for their help in the matter.

British officials insisted they did not tell Scottish justice officials what to do — and in any case, they could not, because the decision was not theirs to make.

"The idea that the British government and the Libyan government would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it form part of some business deal … it's not only wrong, it's completely implausible and actually quite offensive," Business Secretary Peter Mandelson told reporters in London.

Specifically, there are questions as to whether al-Megrahi's release was connected to British interests in Libyan oil.

Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, said al-Megrahi's release was a constant point of discussion during trade talks. In comments aired on the Libyan television station he owns, he said those discussions stretched back to former Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.

"In fact, in all the trade, oil and gas deals which I have supervised, you were there on the table," Gadhafi's son told al-Megrahi. "When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table."

Blair, who resigned in 2007, told CNN on Saturday that the Libyans did raise the issue of al-Megrahi but he told them he did not have the power to release the bomber.

Libya has accepted formal responsibility for the Pan Am bombing that killed 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground, but many Libyans see al-Megrahi as an innocent victim scapegoated by the West.

Al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the explosion that killed 270 people, has maintained his innocence even as he dropped his appeal as part of the process that eventually allowed for his release.