Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lockerbie & Occam’s Razor

So, I’ve got this correct, the initial reaction to Kenny MacAskill’s decision to free the Lockerbie bobmber was that this demonstrated nothing but the SNP’s provincialism. Small-toon politicians desperate to make a mark on the international stage and all that. Now we’re told that it was all just about grubby, if lucrative commercial interests and that London was quite happy to see al-Megrahi repatriated, whether on compassionate grounds or as a consequence of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement agreed with Libya.

It’s possible that both of these theories to be partially true. However, if the Westminster government really did want to see Megrahi sent home to Libya, it’s quite possible that the SNP ministry in Edinburgh would have done everything possible to frustrate London. Now that would have been a piece of grandstanding MacAskill could really have got his teeth into. Hamming it up for Scotland and for justice and the memory of the 280 people killed at Lockerbie and all the rest of it.

And that would probably have been a more popular decision at home and abroad. That the nationalists didn’t play to the gallery suggests, whether one likes it or not, that they took the decision because they thought it the right thing to do. Megrahi then, became the 23rd prisoner (I believe) to be released from a Scottish prison on such compassionate grounds in recent years.

If there is a conspiracy here – and lord knows half the world seems to want there to be one – it lies in the prospect of ministers being advised that Megrahi would have won his appeal. His cancer, if this is the case, proved a blessing since it created a means by which Megrahi could be sent home while also saving everyone’s blushes and keeping the Lockerbie files closed.

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