[This is the headline over an opinion piece by Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]
When Robin Cook and President Clinton agreed to allow a modified form of Professor Black's neutral-country trial of the alleged Lockerbie bombers, they began a process which we now see has transcended even the freshness and hope of the Obama administration. Hope that the behaviour of our mighty transatlantic ally was henceforth to be driven by a philosophy enshrining integrity, right and truth, particularly including human rights.
In the matter of the man suffering in Greenock prison, that is not so.
The naked intervention of President Clinton's wife in the affair has to be seen as the intervention of ignorance, a voice from the previous regime. I have tried but failed to penetrate the Obama administration to warn it that there was highly credible evidence they were wrong to believe the Lockerbie issue honourably settled. I failed to penetrate it.
I can forgive Obama and retain faith in his principles, for I believe that he simply has not found time to review the basis on which the decision to allow his Secretary of State to intervene was based. (...)
At a summit in Birmingham, England, many years ago, I tried to meet President Clinton. Instead I was fobbed off with a security adviser called Bandler at the president's hotel in Birmingham.
I asked him what plans his president had to overcome what was then the Lockerbie deadlock. There were none, until the resources of the CIA and MI6 were later engaged to prepare the way for the show trial that was to ensue at Zeist in Holland.
Holland was wonderful, Robin Cook was on our side, seeking to support the forces of justice.
We were entranced, expecting to discover the truth.
But by the time Jack Straw arranged a conference call to the UK relatives after the verdict, to bask in what was presented as a victory for the judicial probity of the West, my words to him were: "Mr Straw, I think you should get your people to study the evidence from this trial, not to sit back and enjoy the verdict."
That was, of course, not to be. (...)
What now? Sooner or later the truth will out. Perhaps we shall play a part in reaching that day, perhaps it will only be revealed at the bar of history.
Of one thing I am certain: our culture and our countries' reputations will pay a terrible price in the long run for what became a travesty of justice.
The nascent independence of Scotland will be mortally wounded unless she roots out those who have contributed to this monstrosity of a verdict that is the product of self-interest and international pressure, joined by a failure of any knight in shining armour to emerge from among us with the weapons to uphold truth and justice.
It may look as though just one Arab has paid the price of our perfidy: this is not so. I fear we shall all pay.
My daughter, and those who died with her, deserved a far better memorial to their young lives snuffed out. I tried.
[An article entitled "Megrahi awaits decision with months left to live" by Michael Settle, The Herald's UK Political Editor, can be read here.]
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