[This is the headline over an article in the Daily Telegraph by the paper's columnist Alan Cochrane. This is a staunch Conservative-supporting newspaper and it is somewhat surprising, and particularly significant, that it should carry such an article. The following are extracts.]
Whether deliberate or not — and I suspect it might have been planned to some degree — there was more than a whiff of old time religion in Kenny MacAskill’s entirely expected announcement yesterday that the Lockerbie bomber was to be allowed to go home to Libya to die.
In style and substance the Scottish justice minister adopted the sonorous tones and ecclesiastical references more in keeping with the pulpit than the despatch box. As such it was a surprise from this politician, who has never before worn his belief in a supreme being on his sleeve.
Mind you, his family is from Lewis - the closest Scotland has to a Bible-belt - and perhaps he thought that saying that Abdelbasit Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi "now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power" might ease the acute pain his decision will cause amongst many relatives of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie outrage.
It was this ‘sentence’ that Mr MacAskill used to justify his highly controversial decision, which sent shock waves and earned him serious criticism around the world, especially in the United States. The verdict from on high for Megrahi was one that no court, in any jurisdiction in any land, could revoke or overrule. It is terminal final and irrevocable .."He is going to die." (...)
Scotland’s international reputation has been damaged by this affair which the SNP have allowed to drag on for far too long.
However, this observer believes that Kenny MacAskill made the correct decision for the correct reasons, appallingly difficult though it must have been.
It is true that those responsible for the Lockerbie outrage showed no compassion for their victims, none of whom were allowed to spend their last days with their families. And it is true that no fewer than eight Scottish judges - three at the original trial and five at the subsequent appeal - had believed that there was evidence enough to convict Megrahi.
But I think a compassionate release is in order in this case and if this man really does have only weeks to live - and that’s what the doctors told the minister - then he should be permitted to die at home. (...)
David Cameron, the Tory leader, describ[ed] the release as "nonsensical" and Bill Aitken, for the Scottish Tories. saying that it should have been possible to keep Megrahi somewhere in Scotland. The Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders also deplored the release.
Strangest of all, however, and adding fuel to the many conspiracy theories that abound in this incredible case has been the dog that didn’t bark in the night. I refer, of course, to the British government.
It is of course proper of them to state, as they have, that the decision on either the transfer or the compassionate release of Megrahi was purely a matter for the Scottish authorities. But given that the Scottish minister saw or spoke to or received representations from victims’ families on both sides of the Atlantic, with both the Libyan and US governments and with Megrahi himself, is it not beyond comprehension that the British government offered no opinion on the issue?
Does Prime Minister Gordon Brown not have a view on whether this man should go home? Does David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary? They may say that if they said anything it might have been construed as putting pressure of the devolved administration in Edinburgh.
But saying nothing was as Mr MacAskill said, with massive understatement,"highly regrettable."
All in all, this sometimes brittle minister made a good fist of a decision that is probably the most difficult I’ve ever seen a politician ever have to make.
[Note by RB: As I am becoming tired of saying, it simply is not the case that eight Scottish judges believed there was sufficient evidence to convict Megrahi.
The five judges in Megrhi's first 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."]
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