Sunday 4 July 2010

Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and disclosure of SCCRC documents

It has recently been wrongly reported, that Mr Al-Megrahi refused to give his consent for the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to release documents relating to him, referred to in the Commission’s Statement of Reasons on his case, and its appendices, that he and his lawyers provided, either directly or indirectly, to the Commission.

The true position is that Mr Al Megrahi, through his Libyan lawyer, made it clear to the Commission in a meeting on April 12th 2010 that he was happy for the documents to be released, providing all the official bodies that provided documents to the Commission agreed to the release of all of those documents. These bodies include the police, the Crown Office, the Foreign Office, and the intelligence service, or services, which provided the secret documents referred to in Chapter 25 sources of the Statement of Reasons.

Mr Al Megrahi’s position has always been, and remains, that all information relating to the case should be made public.

[The above is the text of a statement dated 30 June 2010 issued to the Press Association news agency on behalf of Mr Megrahi by his Libyan lawyer, Mr Hamdi Fanoush, to whom I express my thanks for sending me a copy.]

2 comments:

  1. Of course Megrahi wants the documents released.

    But the statement

    "The true position is that Mr Al Megrahi, through his Libyan lawyer, made it clear to the Commission in a meeting on April 12th 2010 that he was happy for the documents to be released, providing all the official bodies that provided documents to the Commission agreed to the release of all of those documents"

    is confusing.

    By all means, it is a fair and natural demand, but I wonder why it is put stated this way?

    Because, logically it states that if just one official body should not want to release all documents, then Megrahi would not be happy to have the [other] documents released.

    I assume that this is not how it is?

    Or does Megrahi really mean "All, or nothing at all?"

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  2. That is indeed confusing. And extremely irritating. They are all playing their silly games, the British, the Americans und the Libyans.

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