Lockerbie + 22 - the tangled web

On the 22^nd anniversary of Britain’s worst ever terrorist outrage – the Lockerbie bombing – the only man ever convicted of it, the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, is said to be in a coma and close to death.

Later today, a US senator is due to unveil the results of his own personal inquiry into Megrahi’s compassionate release last year. What the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic seem desperate to prevent, though, is any inquiry into who really planted the bomb that blew up the Pan-Am jumbo.

Megrahi was released only after he agreed to drop his appeal against conviction, and ten days ago it was revealed that an 800 page dossier compiled by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, examining the flaws in the case against him, is to be kept under lock and key. The commission had identified at least six grounds for thinking Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted. The UK government has also rejected requests for a full public inquiry.

Dr Jim Swire, who daughter was one of the 270 victims of the bombing, believes Megrahi was released in order to prevent an appeal that the authorities might have found ‘very embarrassing’. Now two of the Libyan’s children say they are preparing to sue the powers-that-be in Scotland for wrongfully imprisoning their father. Will that lead to the issues finally being properly examined? Or will the authorities just pay up so they can maintain the silence? Come on Wikileaks!

Labour and the USA - no change

Even the Labour party must by now realise that one reason why it suffered one of its heaviest ever defeats in May’s general election was its nauseating subservience to the United States. But apparently not. Indeed, Labour’s “justice spokesman” in the Scottish Parliament, Richard Baker, seems to be propounding the view that we are nothing more than a province of America.

The Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had refused a summons from American senators to cross the Atlantic and be berated like a naughty schoolboy over his decision to release Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted – many believe wrongly – of the Lockerbie bombing. (See my blogs of 27 July, 16 and 22 Aug, and 19 Sept, 2009 and 17 July, 2010.)

Mr Baker was incensed. When America hands out an instruction, he thinks we Brits should jump to it. Fortunately, Mr MacAskill seems to have a better understanding of where his duty lies. "I am elected by the Scottish people, I am accountable to the Scottish parliament,” he said. If only Labour politicians could get their heads around this, they might not dragoon us into disastrous American adventures, like Iraq.

How about a counter-invitation to the American senators? Why don’t they go to Afghanistan and stand in for some of the British soldiers currently risking life and limb there to save the US from embarrassment?

Mass murder - a tale of two sentences

So Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, got his release, to cries of outrage from the United States government. It was “absolutely wrong”, said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Then in a bizarre coincidence, up popped former US army officer Lt William Calley – not much heard of since the 1970’s when he was convicted of the mass murder of 500 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Yesterday Lt Calley offered his first public apology for the crime.

Back in 1971, he was sent to gaol for life. And what was the reaction of the US government? The unbending determination that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release a mass murderer before he had served his full sentence? No, actually President Nixon quickly cut his punishment to three years’ house arrest.

And there were no doubts about Calley’s guilt unlike that of Megrahi (see my blogs of July 27 and Aug 16), nor was he dying of cancer. Double standards, anyone?