He’s dying: does it matter where?

[This is the headline over an article in The Sunday Herald by their distinguished columnist Ian Bell. It reads in part:]

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi is dying in a Scottish jail because of his conviction for the mass murder of Pan Am Flight 103's 259 passengers in 1988 and for the deaths of 11 people in Lockerbie. Many - and I am one - do not believe he is guilty. For once, that is not the point. Why is it impossible for the dying prisoner to end his days confined in Libya, his homeland?

Because the worst mass murder "in British legal history" deserves no leeway? Because Colonel Gaddafi's regime is not to be trusted, even if Britain's government these days says otherwise? Or just because, under the tendentious terms of a "prisoner transfer agreement" between Libya and the United Kingdom, al-Megrahi must first drop his latest appeal? Which is to say that he must accept his guilt and the flawed (at best) process that led to his conviction, if he hopes to die at home? (...)

Chile's Augusto Pinochet was responsible for many thousands of murders: no serious doubt exists. But when England ceased to be his favourite shopping destination, and when a trial in Madrid seemed likely, Mrs Thatcher's chum was suddenly transformed into a poor, infirm, senile old man. Straw chose to believe it, officially, and to exercise compassion. Safely across the Atlantic, Pinochet hopped instantly from his wheelchair. Justice, if such is the yardstick, was denied.

What does the yardstick amount to, in any case? If British citizens are convicted abroad for crimes large or small the first priority, it seems, is repatriation. We find it cruel that foreign jurisdictions sometimes hesitate to release callow drug smugglers to the British penal system. There were those, indeed, who thought that even Gary Glitter deserved better than an Asian clink. But al-Megrahi? That's too much, apparently.

Perhaps it is. Some of the friends and relatives of those lost in the bombing of Clipper Maid Of The Seas, the Americans in particular, are horrified by the transfer agreement, far less by the notion the prisoner in HMP Greenock deserves consideration. If guilty, al-Megrahi exhibited not a shred of humanity in plotting mass murder. His rights, you might say, are forfeited. But the fact remains the principle of transfer has been agreed. The law, Scots law, seems only to demand its own reputation be protected in the process.

So al-Megrahi could die of prostate cancer in Greenock. Equally, the Scottish government could decide the absence of compassion amounts to cruelty, and that cruelty has no place in a justice system: a line of thinking that seems to have occurred to Jack Straw, who last week granted the "compassionate release" of terminally ill train robber Ronnie Biggs. Kenny MacAskill, our own justice minister, has visited the prisoner and seems inclined to interpret the rules flexibly. These say a terminally ill inmate should have no more than three months to live. And why should that guideline be sacrosanct, exactly?

I don't ask these questions simply because I doubt al-Megrahi's guilt. This has more to do with the point and the purpose of retribution generally. I could point out the Crown continues to be devious, suspiciously so, in its efforts to counter the Libyan's second appeal. I could also note that an entirely safe conviction does not have to be protected by attempts to limit the grounds for such an appeal, as we witnessed from the Crown in 2008.

But with the Scottish system demanding an effective admission of guilt in exchange for repatriation, and American relatives threatening to seek judicial review to block any exchange, ensuring al-Megrahi will die at Greenock, I fail to envy MacAskill's task. Even his prison visit was condemned by Labour and supportive lawyers. It was "shameful", supposedly, and likely to undermine the legal process. It was in fact perfectly proper, well within his rights and, arguably, his duty. In a Britain that proposes to extradite diagnosed Asperger's victims to satisfy US paranoia over computer hacking, with no hope of reciprocity, MacAskill is a small beacon of sanity. What difference does it make if al-Megrahi dies in Tripoli rather than Greenock? What need is served? And must I add that Western allies who conspire in extraordinary rendition and franchised torture do not hold much moral high ground?

Al-Megrahi is a pawn. He is a pawn for governments, a pawn for investigators and prosecutors, most of all, a pawn in the grief and unresolved anger of the bereaved. He could be repatriated, if he drops his appeal. He could, conceivably, continue his appeal, if he is released on compassionate grounds. So ask yourself this: when a dying man denies guilt for a crime that still beggars belief, why should any avenue ever be blocked?

Justice, idealised justice, is meant, above all, to reflect our moral worth as a society. By that measure alone the al-Megrahi case is, as lawyers like to say, unsatisfactory. Deeply unsatisfactory.

[There is an editorial on the subject in the same newspaper. The following are extracts:]

This weekend two old men, long resident in different British jails, are being treated very differently and for very different reasons. One of them, the great train robber Ronnie Biggs, was released from his 30-year prison sentence, though such is the gravity of his physical condition that the 80-year-old will probably live out the rest of his life in hospital. In making the decision, the justice secretary finally agreed that he had come to the conclusion that the risk posed by the old boy was "manageable", hence the decision to grant "compassionate release on medical grounds". (...)

Compare this to the treatment meted out to Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi who is incarcerated in Greenock Prison for his role in the destruction of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in December 1988.

In the incident, 259 passengers lost their lives while 11 other innocents were killed on the ground. Almost from the start, the Lockerbie bombing was destined to be a cause celebre. Then as now, it came during a period of heightened tensions between the West and the Arab world and although it predated the so-called war against terrorism, the incident was still regarded as a challenge to Western values.

Twenty years later, it is still impossible to claim with absolute certainty - surely the cornerstone of any decent criminal justice system - that al-Megrahi was the only instigator of that dreadful crime. Others, too, must have been involved and it is even possible that he was an innocent caught up in a hall of mirrors and that he was left to take the rap. There are certainly those who think so and the opinion is given weight by the fact that these include a number of the families who lost loved ones on board Pan Am Flight 103. Of course, there are also those who believe that al-Megrahi is irredeemably guilty and they, too, include victims' families, proving that there is no freehold on grief and suffering.

Whatever else the Scottish prison system has done to al-Megrahi, he is no longer the man that he once was. Age has caught up with him and he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. As with the case of Biggs, there are reasonable grounds for showing compassion and allowing him to be released from prison, although in his case this would not keep him in hospital, but allow him to return to his native Libya.

Two months ago the Libyan authorities made just such an application under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer deal agreed by Tripoli and the UK and then followed it last week with a separate application for al-Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds.

So far the good sense shown in Biggs's case has been lacking in the dealings with al-Megrahi - a result no doubt of the outrage expressed by some of the victims' families - but last week there was a sudden outbreak of objective thinking. Justice minister Kenny MacAskill met al-Megrahi at Greenock - the first minister to do such a thing - and that visit will do much to concentrate his mind in the days ahead when the Libyan government's request is given due consideration.

It was right and proper that MacAskill took this step, not because of any doubts about al-Megrahi's sentence, but because justice should always go the extra mile to convince itself - and us - that the right thing is being done.