Unanswered Lockerbie questions

[What follows is the text of a letter by Dr Jim Swire published in Tuesday's edition of The Times.]

Father of Lockerbie victim speaks out after release of al-Megrahi

Sir, So al-Megrahi has gone home and questions surround the propriety of his going. What about the question of his guilt? The official UN observer of the trial, Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna, has described the trial as a travesty of justice and the verdict as untenable. Even the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided there might have been a miscarriage of justice. The questions that are important to UK relatives of the Lockerbie victims are these: who was really behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher Government of the day ignore all the warnings it got before Lockerbie? Why did it refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of an inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court could not hear of it till after the verdict?

Dr Jim Swire

Father of Lockerbie victim, Flora, and a member of the UK Families-Flight 103 group

[Two letters are published in Tuesday's edition of The Herald under the headline "The last thing governments want is truth of Lockerbie to emerge". They can be read here.

A letter from Dr Swire also appears in The Daily Telegraph. It is referred to here. The full text is as follows.]

Kenny MacAskill was thoughtful enough to listen to some of the UK relatives before he made his decision. I thought him a man of integrity and urged him, on humanitarian and Christian grounds to release the dying man under 'Compassionate Release', not 'Prisoner Transfer', which I saw as a political trap.

Unlike 'Prisoner Transfer' This would also have allowed Megrahi's appeal to continue, had the prisoner not withdrawn it. Megrahi had always told me that he was determined to clear his name before going home, but under the shadow of death, who can blame him for changing his mind, uncertain as he was that he could trust his captors? After 8 years jail his appeal had barely started and at a snail's pace even then, although Scotland's SCCRC had decided his trial might have been a miscarriage of justice.

Whatever the unsavoury concealment of the 'deal in the desert' may mean, there are a number of us who believe that wresting something good out of something as evil as Lockerbie is the way to go. Surely improving commercial ties is a good thing for the citizens of both countries, that is what good politicians do.

The media reaction to the release ignores a far far more important question: was he guilty anyway? Many believe he was not, the SCCRC thought he might not be. The UN's appointed observer, Prof. Hans Kochler of Vienna has described the verdict as incomprehensible and a parody of justice. Many others agree.If he was not guilty, then why was he prosecuted and the real perpetrators ignored?

What we the UK relatives need is the truth and answers to the following questions:

Who was behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher government of the day ignore all the warnings they got before Lockerbie? Why did they refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of this inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court did not hear of it till after the verdict? Why were we constantly subjected to the ignominy of being denied the truth as to why our families were not protected in what even our crippled FAI (crippled because it too was denied the information about Heathrow) found to have been a preventable disaster?

The details of Mr Megrahi's release surely are of little significance compared with these questions.