Thursday 3 September 2009

US 'given bomber jail assurance'

[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

The US had a clear understanding that the Lockerbie bomber would serve his full jail term in the UK, a former British ambassador has said.

Sir Christopher Meyer was speaking to the BBC about his time as ambassador in Washington during the 1998 negotiations over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's trial. He said there was a "clear political and diplomatic understanding" Megrahi would remain in jail in Scotland. (...)

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said Hillary Clinton had stressed to him that there was a "clear understanding" that Megrahi would serve out his term in jail in Scotland if convicted.

Mr MacAskill said he contacted the UK government and they informed him that no assurances had been given to the US government at the time.

Outlining his decision to free Megrahi last month, the justice secretary said the US government and American families believed there had been agreements made, prior to trial, "regarding the place of imprisonment of anyone convicted".

Speaking to the BBC, Sir Christopher Meyer said: "One thing I do remember very, very clearly was that it was very important to them [the US] to get a commitment out of us that if Megrahi and the other guy were found guilty, they would serve the full term of their sentence in a UK jail.

"For the Americans that was a vital selling point for the relatives and friends of the Americans who died in the blowing up of the Pan Am flight."

[On the same issue, the Daily Mail has an article headlined "Brown the betrayer: U.S. fury over Britain's bare-faced lies and our broken promises to keep Lockerbie bomber in jail" which quotes certain somewhat inflammatory (but nevertheless accurate) remarks by me.]

3 comments:

  1. It is unbelievable how long some British media can ruminate over the topic: who assured what to whom and why not.
    It is so simple to understand:
    1. If London assured the Americans that Mr. Megrahi would serve all of his sentence in Scotland they were wrong to do that because it was not for them to decide but for the Scottish. (At times the people in Downing Street still seem to confuse such distinctions since they were used to be an imperial power).
    2. When Mr. MacAskill decided to free Mr. Megrahi he nevertheless acted within that framework. By releasing Mr. Megrahi on humanitarian grounds he terminated the jail sentence. So Mr. Megrahi definitely served all of his sentence in Scotland.
    3. Those merciless people – in Great Britain and the USA – who want Mr. Megrahi to spend all the 28 years in a Scottish prison obviously want his corpse to stay there for two decades when he has died. That is the consequence of their medieval logic.
    4. When Mr. MacAskill tells us that London was not clear on their own assurances towards the USA (or that there were no assurances at all) that is absolutely credible. Had London been determined to let Mr. Megrahi stay in prison for the rest of his life – why then did they sign a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya when Mr. Megrahi was the only Libyan prisoner in Great Britain? And why didn´t Mrs. Clinton and the other senators cry out when that happened?
    Instead of all that ballooning it would be fine if the BBC and the other British media could dwell some time on the more important question of the unresolved Lockerbie case. One thing is that Mr. Megrahi abandoned his appeal and now has to live and die as a convicted person. The other thing is whether Scotland and Great Britain (and the international community, for that matter) can live with the fact that one of the largest murder cases ended up in a fundamental question mark delivered by the SCCRC.

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  2. Nennt mich einfach Adam, I don't know what the rules for pardons and early releases are in your country but in America the prisoner generally needs to show some remorse for his actions and make attempts to repay society for his crimes. A short reading of any one of Mr. Megrahi's writings will show you that he has not taken responsibility for his actions or changed the person he is since entering prison. I would rather show mercy to the families of the victims who lost the justice they were promised rather than show mercy to an unrepentant individual who received a fair trial and was deemed to have killed well over 200 innocent people. Many families here in America lost people in the bombing so I sympathize with their outrage. The outrage in America is further compounded, to a lesser degree, by the fact that our government has blocked the release of communications it had with Scottish officials prior to Megrahi's release. While the US government has stated that it opposed the release seeing documentation of that might be of great help.

    For more stories and information on this subject please visit: http://www.americanprinciplesproject.org/blogs/tags/lockerbie-bomber/ or
    http://www.americanprinciplesproject.org/topics/miscellaneous/298-robert-george-on-the-lockerbie-bomber.html

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  3. Dear Jordan,
    When Mr. Megrahi was released he issued a letter to the Scottish public and to the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie crime. The wording of that letter should impress us all, I hope.
    What Mr. Megrahi certainly was not able to do was to take responsibility for a criminal act which he always has denied any involvement in.
    As you surely know the American history is full of miscarriages of justice where innocent people were sentenced to death.
    In this case the official Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has found that there "might have been a miscarriage of justice" and therefore the SCCRC has allowed an appeal to take place. Before we say Megrahi is guilty we should call for a scrutiny of the case.

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