Alex Salmond [the First Minister in the Scottish Government] was preparing his legal team last night for the most difficult decision of his time in office – whether to allow Britain's biggest mass-murderer to be released from jail and serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya. (…)
Megrahi, 57, a former Libyan secret agent, is terminally ill with prostate cancer and has only just begun his appeal, a process expected to last a year.
However, if he opts to drop the appeal then it will be up to the First Minister, justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and Scottish Government officials to decide whether to send him home. (…)
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott said: "A Scottish court convicted Megrahi of a truly heinous crime – 270 people lost their lives in the Lockerbie bombing.
"The justice secretary needs to respect the judgment of the Scottish courts. Megrahi should serve his time in a Scottish prison. This application should be refused." (…)
A senior Scottish Government source said there was no way ministers could agree to transfer Megrahi to Libya if legal proceedings were still ongoing. The appeal would have to be concluded – one way or the other – before any decision was taken, he said.
Megrahi has always protested his innocence, but if he drops his appeal and relies on the transfer agreement to get him home, he will leave as a convicted murderer. If he decides to pursue his appeal, he could die before the legal process concludes.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken said: "When this issue (Megrahi's transfer] first arose as a possibility, we said we would normally expect someone convicted of such an atrocity over Scotland to serve their full sentence in Scotland. That view still prevails today."
[The above are excerpts from an article in today’s edition of The Scotsman. The article also contains the varying reactions of relatives of those killed on Pan Am 103 to the possibility that Mr Megrahi may be repatriated. The Herald’s coverage of the story can be read here.]
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