Don't dishonour Lockerbie victims

If Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is released from prison, it will be an insult to my brother and all who died in the Lockerbie bombing

Imagine if one of the September 11 hijackers had lived, that he was fairly tried, convicted and sentenced to a lengthy jail term. Then, after just a few years, under an agreement with the Afghan government, we sent him back to serve out his term with the Taliban under Osama bin Laden.

Although it seems almost impossible, a painfully similar scenario is playing out in the Scotland. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the terrorist convicted in the Lockerbie bombing – may soon be released by the Scottish government and handed over to Libya, the very government that plotted this cowardly mass murder.

The evidence against Megrahi is overwhelming and has withstood more than two fervent appeals. He was a member of Libyan intelligence travelling under a false passport to Malta on the day of the bombing, and lied about it more than once. Any rational person reviewing the evidence would conclude that Megrahi is guilty. Even more damning, the court's conviction clearly stated that Megrahi committed the murder for "furtherance of Libyan intelligence". There has been no regime change or democratic revolution. And yet the Scottish government is eager to return this murderer to his dictator – Muammar Gaddafi – a man who has gone on the record as hating all things western.

The Pan Am bombing was the largest single terrorist attack against the United States or the United Kingdom prior to September 11. Megrahi has served less than one month in prison for each person he killed. After all the years of fighting terrorism on their own soil, you would think that the UK wouldn't be so quick to send a terrorist back into the loving arms of the people who masterminded the deaths of so many innocents.

Fine, send him back, but make sure he's in a pine box before you do so.

There are rumours that Megrahi is dying of prostate cancer, and that the basis of the most recent appeal is one of mercy. I have never heard of a prisoner arranging a lesser sentence due to cancer, nor do I care if he dies in his cell. Where was the mercy when Megrahi killed 270 people? Didn't those victims deserve a life long enough to contract cancer?

There are also rumours that he may be innocent, but I fear those rumours are driven by a psychological hysteria brought on by grief. Some family members thought they would feel better once a man was convicted, but their emptiness remained so they created conspiracy theories and rumours. It gave them another rabbit to chase, and I feel sorry for them. However, the evidence is clear and overwhelming. And, this week, even Megrahi himself abandoned the appeal. If he is really innocent and actually going to die soon, why would he not want to clear his name?

But here is the worst part: I fear we will have dishonoured the victims if we let him walk away. I think of the children in Lockerbie, brimming with excitement four days before Christmas. How could the Scottish government send their murderer home to "die in peace"? What peace was there that chilly night in December more than 20 years ago? And, how will we all feel when Megrahi is given a hero's welcome back in Libya?

People of Scotland: he attacked your home, your children, your way of life. Please don't let them dishonour your country in this way.

[The above is the text of an opinion piece in The Guardian by Brian Flynn, the brother of one of the US victims of the destruction of Pan Am 103.

I make no comment, other than to say, as I have done before, that it is absolutely incorrect to say that the evidence against Megrahi "has withstood more than two fervent appeals". There has to date been only one appeal and that appeal did not consider the sufficiency of the evidence against Megrahi or whether any reasonable court could have convicted him on the basis of it.

The appeal judges in that one appeal stated in paragraph 369 of their Opinion:

“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor [senior counsel for Megrahi] stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act [verdict unreasonable on the evidence]. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”

The true position, as I have written elsewhere, is this:

"As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them."]