Thursday, 28 October 2010
Megrahi motion likely to be debated in Scottish Parliament
The motion tabled earlier this week in the Scottish Parliament by Christine Grahame MSP to the effect that Parliament, noting the Justice for Megrahi petition and the SCCRC findings "would welcome the establishment of an independent inquiry in Scotland to consider all the circumstances that led to the conviction" has now been signed by MSPs from the SNP, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. The fact that the motion is supported by MSPs of more than one political party makes it likely that it will be selected for debate. It is noteworthy that no Labour Party MSP has yet signed the motion.
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Good!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the "routine maintenance" referred to on the petition page is already preventing signatures being added? It's been stuck at 1649 for an improbable length of time without a single addition.
This thing is jinxed.
Noticed the site froze at about 1700 hrs.
ReplyDeleteLabour appear to have made it a policy that Megrahi will be used to beat poor Alex Salmond around his beleaguered noggin. None o' them signed Bill Wilson's motion on Depleted Uranium, either. Am I interested in all the wrong things or are they entirely toothless?
ReplyDelete:) silly vote by "Forrester Cockburn and Alison Cockburn
ReplyDelete" on the e-petition, who choose to register one half vote each by appearing in the same entry - aw, 'that not romantic?
Also, notice none of the MSP supporters of Grahame's motion aren't signatories. Does that mean they are not supporters of an inquiry? Do they just want to kick at it, in a debate?
Bill Wilson's motion on Depleted Uranium
ReplyDeleteCould he not get critical mass? (gerrit? LOL)
Lord, this made me seethe...
ReplyDeleteA Scottish Government spokesman said there was no doubt about the safety of Megrahi’s conviction.
Their own public body has cast upon their verdict. Either the guy's as informed as a technophic Highland hermit or he's lying to us.
It'd be interesting to find out how frequently the petition site is subjected to interruption.
ReplyDelete"Labour appear to have made it a policy that Megrahi will be used to beat poor Alex Salmond around his beleaguered noggin."
ReplyDeleteWhat puzzles me is that had I been in Salmond's shoes I would have made sure that Megrahi's appeal went ahead, come hell and high water. The damage to the reputation of the Labour Party would have been far greater than any done to the Scottish legal system (a train wreck anyway).
It makes me wonder what pressures could have been brought to bear to prevent this obvious course of action, and whether they will be used again to prevent an inquiry.
Vronsky said: What puzzles me is that had I been in Salmond's shoes I would have made sure that Megrahi's appeal went ahead, come hell and high water.
ReplyDeleteAnticipating how Ruth will respond to this conundrum: the Rt Hon Alex Salmond is a member of the Privy Council!
What puzzles me is that had I been in Salmond’s shoes I would have made sure that Megrahi’s appeal went ahead, come hell and high water. The damage to the reputation of the Labour Party would have been far greater than any done to the Scottish legal system (a train wreck anyway).
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder what pressures could have been brought to bear to prevent this obvious course of action, and whether they will be used again to prevent an inquiry.
My thoughts exactly, Vronsky. As I see it, there is a huge disconnect between the behaviour one would logically have expected of the SNP and their actual handling of the matter. In particular, there is a disconnect between their behaviour in relation to the PTA discussions in 2007, which was reasonable, and this sudden toeing of the establishment line in 2009 with the blind insistence that the conviction is sound. It has the smell of a group of people who have been "got at". Who by, and what pressures were brought to bear, would be the interesting part, if we knew the answers.
[mode=CT]
The more I look at the Lockerbie incident and investigation, the more I develop an image of some sort of monster in the middle of it all. Some events become clear. Megrahi going about whatever his business was on Malta that day (using an assumed name, and business he has never explained, so possibly something Libyan-security-related). Later in the afternoon, the bomb being smuggled into the baggage container at Heathrow, containing new, traceable clothes bought in Malta a month earlier. Frankfurt-based authorities going "oh, ****!" when news of the disaster broke, and hastening to secure and conceal all relevant baggage handling records for the day. Eight months of acrimonious ping-pong between the UK and German investigating authorities, each one determined that their home airport should not be implicated. Mutually-acceptable solution to declare Malta the point of ingestion and so exonerate both Heathrow and Frankfurt, followed by exclusive concentration on that airport and its environs. Subsequent identification of Megrahi as a plausible suspect and after that a pretty standard police fit-up process to twist all evidence so that it points to the desired suspect.
However, this isn't just another "this guy’s handy, he'll do" fit-up. There's a great deal of evidence to suggest something else in the middle of this being single-mindedly covered up. The release of the "Autumn Leaves" suspects. Jafaar's presence on the flight. The immediate influx of US investigators to Scotland. High-level political directions to back off from implicating the PFLP-GC. McKee's presence on the flight. O'Connor's luggage left behind. The concealed and fabricated evidence. Perhaps not all of this is related, but I suspect much of it is. I think there's something in the middle of all that that the Powers that Be seriously don't want revealed, even now.
No, I don’t believe the US authorities either deliberately bombed that plane, or knew about the plot to bomb it and turned a blind eye or facilitated it. But I think they were up to something very strange in relation to the PFLP-GC and Iran's threatened revenge, and possibly other matters, which would be revealed if the true bombers were identified, and which they have no intention of allowing to be revealed.
I'd dearly love to know how they managed to pressurise the SNP government into going along with this though.
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[Assuming anyone can join in here]
ReplyDeleteAnother CT...or it could just be plain old politics.
The SNP party take a hard look at the pros and cons of an inquiry, and decide, it either will not help their immediate aims, or, it could actually cause them great harm with an election to be fought. It certainly wont win their friendship back with the USA after the oil-for-release-for-democratic-votes debacle. Or they may think it is just not a vote catcher with the public, at a time of austerity worries.
Meantime, the SNP government keep acting the way governments do...e.g. express confidence in the legal system including past rulings until such time as due process overturns a given ruling. Example: If they came out and said, we need an inquiry (which infers they think Megrahi was convicted wrongly) then it is not long before they are taking flak because they never mentioned this in 2009 when they released him on compassionate grounds - yet no pertinent information has surfaced since then to make them think again. So, it looks like there was something underhand going on with his release in the first place - which there was not, of course.
I guess my main boggle point is back to what Vronsky said at the beginning. Why did the SNP not move heaven and earth to make sure the appeal continued? It shouldn't have required much doing anyway, as dropping it was not necessary to the compassionate release. Instead, it seemed as if Kenny MacAskill was actively manipulating the process to coerce Megrahi into dropping the appeal.
ReplyDeleteI find this incomprehensible. If the appeal had continued, and been fairly judged, and the conviction had been quashed, a great deal of the heat would have been taken out of subsequent events.
It looks like a very badly managed affair by the SNP. It seems that the release of Megrahi was, like his conviction, an intelligence operation. Presumably (as a bonus for the British establishment) the details of the deal are being drip-fed to the Unionists in Holyrood, notably the Labour Party, and they will roast Salmond slowly.
ReplyDeleteSalmond is too smart not to have seen political risks in the release, which makes me think the coercion used was formidable.
Totally agree Vronsky. I have said from the beginning that the SNP have mismanaged the whole Megrahi affair in a manner that is difficult to figure. I don't like anyone using the issue for Party politics mind but this would have destroyed Labour and the Tories in one go had Salmond gone to town over Megrahi and the shocking facts behind that conviction. They would have been silenced, shamed and utterly condemned had Salmond decided that Scotland should go after truth and justice about the worst atrocity to happen over our skies since World War 11. He had behind him the independent findings of the SCCRC to support such a position and he did not do it.
ReplyDeleteI am still in shock that he did not do it, I still flinch, cringe and want to throw things every time I hear snippets from MacAskill's speech that day in the Parliament and I will never, never understand why they chose that particular path.