[This is the headline over a short report from Associated Press just posted on the website of The Washington Post. It reads as follows:]
The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the Lockerbie bomber released from a British prison on compassionate grounds is alive but very sick.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi said following a speech in London on Tuesday that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi has "very serious health troubles."
Al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, is the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am flight over Scotland, which killed 270 people. He was freed from a Scottish prison in August on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya.
Doctors gave him only three months to live when he was released.
Critics have accused British authorities of putting commercial interests in Libya ahead of concerns for the families of the victims - many of whom were American college students.
[A longer report giving more of the background has now (Thursday) been published on the African Press Agency website. It can be read here.]
This readers is an example of "argumentum ad misericordiam".
ReplyDeleteThe value of each and every life of the people who died on Pan Am 103 were in every way equal, and the fact that Syracuse students who died makes it no better than if those who had died had not been Syracuse students.
What would have been different would have been the joint decision of the CIA and Iran not to have blown up the aircraft to ensure the political career of HW Bush and give Iran its qesas demand.
Where does real pity come into this? By ensuring that the true story of Lockerbie is made known and not indulging in false and sentimental arguments as displayed in this item.
Children, old people, black people, white people, students, teachers, well people, sick people, and people who can be classified in dozens of different all lost their lives, and the one thing about those lives is that they lost them.
And if could have been so very different if only those cruel hard headed men in US Government and then the Iranian Government had acted with real humanity.