Tripoli, Aug 22 (DPA) Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi met Lockerbie attacker Abdel Basset al-Megrahi a day after he was released from a Scottish jail, a news report said.

Gaddafi received the terminally ill 57-year-old and his family Friday, the Libyan news agency Jana said.

The Libyan leader welcomed the decision of the Scottish government to release al-Megrahi, who is suffering from prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds.

'I congratulate them on their courage and their demonstration of independence,' Jana reported Gaddafi as saying.

The freeing of al-Megrahi has been heavily criticised in Britain and the US. The US had warned Libya not to give al-Megrahi a hero's welcome.

The White House called the enthusiastic welcome from several hundred people at the airport in Tripoli Thursday evening 'outrageous and disgusting.'

The bomb attack on a PanAm plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 killed 270 people.

Al-Megrahi was convicted of the attack but has always protested his innocence.