Monday 31 August 2009

Compassionate release was not part of international game

[The following are excepts from an article in The Daily Telegraph by Alan Cochrane.]

[A]mid all the scenarios surrounding this singular episode -- some crackpot, some merely misguided -- the single fact that many people appear to have great difficulty in accepting is Kenny MacAskill was not acting out a part in some great international game when he decided to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

The Scottish Justice Minister released Megrahi on compassionate grounds. Full stop. He did not release him as part of a prisoner transfer agreement between the United Kingdom and Libya. The two are entirely separate and distinct.

A prisoner transfer agreement had been brokered by Tony Blair, ratified by Gordon Brown and implemented by Jack Straw and may well have seen Megrahi sent back to Libya to serve out the remainder of his 27-year sentence in exchange for some lucrative oil deals for British, EU and US companies.

But he was not sent back to Libya under the terms of that agreement. In fact, as he and Alex Salmond keep saying, Mr MacAskill refused, for a variety of reasons, to send him back under a prisoner transfer deal. Instead, he decided to release him on compassionate grounds after he was told, he says, that Megrahi had three months or less to live because of his terminal cancer.

What is driving this correspondent to distraction is the continued belief in some quarters that the SNP administration in Edinburgh was acting under orders from Downing Street in letting the bomber go home. To anyone who knows anything about the current relationship between ministers in London and Edinburgh and about the devolution 'settlement' in general, such a theory is positively bonkers. (...)

There clearly was a prisoner transfer deal connected with oil business and Megrahi was obviously a part of it but those issues are for Gordon Brown and his Cabinet to answer, not Messrs Salmond and MacAskill. Indeed, that pair are coming over all holier-than-thou over the fact that they didn't send him home to die because of any deals done by London, but for compassionate reasons.

Call me old fashioned, if you like, but that's what I believe to be the case. And I think the decision was the right one, even if they're getting more than a bit sanctimonious about the whole affair.

If there are questions to be answered about why the British government thinks that terrorist bombers are fit subjects to be included in trade deals and their release bartered away for commercial ends, then that's for them to explain. It is no business of the Nats in Edinburgh, which to be fair to them is what they've been saying to London for nigh on two years.

1 comment:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE:

    MEBO are determined to reveal the Scottish miscarriage of justice with our exonerating evidence and thus help to rehabilitate Libya and give Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi his honour back.
    We will prove that Libya and Mr Al Megrahi had absolutely nothing to do with the PanAm 103 bombing!

    A new public investigation in this case will rise Libya's international reputation and the prestige of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mr. Saif el-Islam Gadhafi, who was a key figure in normalizing Libya's relations with the World and make the international community aware of the unjust UN-embargo against Libya and its people.

    The key for the final proof is that the MST-13 fragment
    does not descend from a timer supplied to Libya.
    After evaluating the criminal manipulation in the Lockerbie affair, it must be concluded that the “Lockerbie Criminal Team” after September 17, 1999 had themselves been convinced that the MST-13 timer fragment, allegedly found in Lockerbie, could not have come from the twenty MST-13 timers delivered to Libya.

    This was the logical reason that after Bolliers personal expertise of the timer fragments in Dumfries beetween September 13 and September 17 these two crucial pieces of evidence PT/35(b) and DP/31(a) against Libya had been manipulated for a second time intentionally by Scottish "Officials".
    Why the manipulated MST-13 timer fragment play such an important role in the "Lockerbie-scandal"?
    The prosecution was already in possession of at least one MST-13 timer before the timer fragment was allegedly found in the collar of a T-shirt at the site of Lockerbie. This timer was used to set up the wrong trace to incriminate Libya and put heavy economical sanctions (UN embargo) on Libya (1993). Then Mr Abdelbaset al Megrahi and Mr al-Amin Khalifa Fhima were found as scape-goats and indicted. For Megrahi's conviction the Malta-bombing-suitcase theorie was invented (2001).

    It was only through this criminal action that it became possible to carry out the political order to implicate and maintain the country of Libya in the attack on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

    Important: Some of the Scottish Officials are the true criminals in the Lockerbie Affair: Ex forensic scientist Dr Thomas Hayes (RARDE) UK, Ex forensic expert Allen Feraday (RARDE) UK and three known persons of the Scottish police are responsible for manipulating evidence in the Lockerbie Affair and are still protected by the Scottish Justice ! (They are not involved in the PanAm 103 bombing, but responsible for the conspiracy against Libya).


    More informations including defence evidences on: www.lockerbie.ch
    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland

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