Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sending the Lockerbie Bomber Home

I could have done without Kenny MacAskill talking quite so much about our values “as a people”, if only because, as Fraser writes, we actually often do insist that prisoners die in jail. That though, is really an argument for showing a degree of compassion more often, not for denying it in this instance, no matter the ghastliness of the cime for which Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted.

Nonetheless, on balance, I thought MacAskill’s justification of his decision to release Megrahi so that he may die at home and in the company of his family, was about as good as could have been expected given both the circumstances and the man making the decision. The easy decision – certainly the one that Jack Straw would have made had it been his responsibility – would have been to insist that Megrahi die in prison. Deciding otherwise automatically opens MacAskill to accusations of grandstanding and political posturing.

Unsurprisingly, then, reaction to MacAskill’s decision has split along partisan grounds: SNP supporters think he did well; those most hostil to the nationalists -such as Brother Nelson – are appalled.

My own preference would have been for Megrahi’s appeal to continue, no matter how embarrassing that might have proved. Contra Fraser, there is some reason to suppose that Megrahi’s conviction is unsafe. Not all the questions raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission have been answered.

That leaves us in an unsatisfactory position. Megrahi and, more widely, Libya may well be guilty. Whether the evidence is sufficient to support a Guilty rather than a Not Proven verdict in court is a different matter. To further complicate matters, few people believe that Megrahi, even if he did put the bomb on the plane, was the man behind the plot to destroy Pan-Am 103.

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