[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
A 90-day deadline to decide the prison transfer request of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will not be met by the Scottish Government.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill told BBC Radio Scotland he needed more information before reaching a decision.
However, he stressed that the final outcome would not be affected by "political or economic" factors.
An application was received in May to let Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi complete his sentence in a Libyan jail.
Mr MacAskill is currently considering the transfer request as well as an application for release on compassionate grounds by the Libyan.
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Morning Extra programme: "There's a 90-day timescale within the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement) and that's due to end shortly.
"I won't be able to meet it precisely because of information still to come in and I will have to reflect upon what happens.
"But I will thereafter be seeking to act as expeditiously as possible and I think I will seek if I can to deal with questions of prisoner transfer and compassion together."
Mr MacAskill has spoken with the US Attorney General, the US families and British families of victims.
He will also meet with Megrahi next week and said today that his final decision will be taken on a variety of factors. (...)
Megrahi is currently appealing against his conviction and Mr MacAskill cannot grant a transfer while this is outstanding in the courts.
However, the justice secretary is able to consider the application from Libya and could refuse the transfer while the appeal is running.
It emerged earlier this month that no decision on the appeal against conviction will be reached until the autumn, after one of the judges involved underwent heart surgery.
[The Morning Extra programme on which Mr MacAskill was speaking was broadcast starting at 09.00, one hour after the publication of the previous post on this blog.
The two Scottish "heavy" newspapers cover the matter in their editions of 1 August. The Herald's report can be read here; and The Scotsman's here.]
Time to bite the bullet Mr MacAskill. The choice is, and always has been, clear and simple: compassionate release, thus allowing the current appeal process to come to its natural conclusion, hopefully before Mr Megrahi dies. Should the judgement be that there has been a miscarriage of justice, those who have been baying for Megrahi's blood whilst claiming to respect the stature of the Scottish legal system - the name Duggan springs to mind in this regard - will have to redirect their ire towards those responsible in the first place for this unconscionably disgraceful mire.
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