REUTERS - A dying Libyan convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and freed on compassionate grounds despite U.S. objections was met by African parliamentary deputies on Wednesday in an apparent public show of support.

The United States and domestic critics expressed anger over the release by Scottish authorities of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and what many saw as his hero’s welcome in Tripoli. Scottish and British authorities have denied accusations they bowed to Libyan pressure for fear of losing commercial contracts.

Megrahi, suffering prostate cancer, was released last month on the grounds that he has three months or less to live. Any public appearances are likely to stir further anger in Britain and the United States.

Megrahi was moved on his wheelchair from his hospital bed room to a conference room at Tripoli Medical Centre where African parliament members greeted him, eyewitnesses said.

“I congratulated him for his return home and I found him very courageous despite his health condition,” Moussa Idriss Ndele, Chairman of the Pan African Parliament, told reporters.

The meeting with Megrahi lasted about 10 minutes before he was returned to his hospital bed.

The Pan African Parliament combines representatives of 48 nations of the 53 that comprise the African Union.

Megrahi, 57, is the only person convicted of the bombing, in which a Pan Am jet carrying 259 passengers—most of them American—was blown up over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all on board and 11 people on the ground.

MPs and other officials, including authorities at the Medical Centre declined to comment on Megrahi’s health.  Last week, a spokesman for Tripoli Medical Centre said he was too ill to speak to reporters. But other Libyan officials said later his condition was not a cause of worry.

The African legislative body was invited by Libya’s parliament-like General People Congress to gather in Sirte, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, to mark the 10th anniversary of the creation of the African Union, where it was launched 10 years ago to Wednesday.

“The meeting with Megrahi came following Libya’s prodding to MPs. The Libyans want the meeting with Megrahi to be seen as retort to the European Parliament members who met Bulgarian nurses after their release by Tripoli,” said an African MP, who does not want to be named.

Libya sentenced the nurses to death for what Tripoli said was their deliberate infecting of Libyan children with the HIV virus. It released them in 2007.