Scottish Parliament’s verdict on Lockerbie bomber sacrifices justice for political point-scoring

[This is the headline over an article by Alan Cochrane in today's edition of The Daily Telegraph. It reads in part:]

An entirely predictable event occurred at Holyrood yesterday. The Scottish Parliament’s justice committee met to finalise its report on the release of the Lockerbie bomber and guess what it concluded?

The committee found by a majority that the decision last autumn by Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister, was wrong. It will say so in public when the report is published tomorrow.

Mind you, it is peppered with caveats insisted upon by the minority SNP members. It is hedged to such an extent, in fact, that, unless I am mistaken, any criticism of the minister may well be much diminished. (...)

But, not to put too fine a point on it, the whole thing is a farce. Given that the composition of the justice committee is three SNP members, three Labour, one Tory and one Liberal Democrat — in other words a majority for the opposition parties, all of which opposed the bomber’s release — the report was always going to come down against MacAskill.

It was as certain as the morning, as sure as eggs is eggs and it is ludicrous to pretend otherwise.

While there may be many, not least the families of the victims of Britain’s worst terrorist outrage, who will pore over every word of the justice committee report, they should take no solace from its findings.

It is sadly obvious that this is a report produced not by dispassionate observers of the scene, but by political animals acting primarily for reasons of party advantage.
The main aim of the opposition MSPs was to bash the Nats. Those who owe allegiance to Mr MacAskill’s party saw it as their bounden duty to protect their man. They may all take this as an insult to their honour — I hope they do — but this report was base coinage right from the start. (...)

It is unsurprising that this is the case. Those responsible for setting up the ground rules for Holyrood supposed, stupidly as it turns out, that members of the Scottish Parliament would, somehow, be unlike their Westminster colleagues and would pay no heed to party politicking.

In fact, Edinburgh’s lot has turned out pretty much like London’s, as was bound to be the case. With a minority SNP administration in power holding a one-seat advantage over Labour there is always scope for the opposition to embarrass and defeat ministers.

It is a shame that a report on such an emotional subject as the release of a mass murderer should be devalued like this.

But I’m afraid that is the way they do things at Holyrood.

[In a comment posted on the newspaper's website, Dr Jim Swire writes:

"Surely the real scandal is that we still refer to him as the 'Lockerbie bomber' or 'mass murderer'without a second thought when we don't know yet whether even that is true.

"To what purpose did Scotland's SCCRC decide there may have been a miscarriage of justice here? Should we not pursue that finding? Many now support the doubts voiced by the SCCRC. Scotland needs to work through all her own provisions for a just verdict before squabbling over Kenny's decision. Future confidence in our prosecution system depends upon that."

Alan Cochrane returns to the issue at the end of an article published on the Telegraph website on Friday, 5 February. He writes:

"I was wrong earlier this week when I expressed fears about the nature and content of the justice committee’s report on the release of the Lockerbie bomber. It is much worse than I had envisaged.

"It broke down completely on party lines, as I predicted, but the extent of their partisanship is staggering to behold with the three Labour MSPs saying one thing and the three SNP members saying another. The upshot, and on such an important issue, is that the report is a mouse, worthy only of the incinerator."]