Deal that freed bomber

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Scottish Sunday Express. It does not appear on the newspaper's website. The report reads as follows:]

FBI's top Lockerbie agent claims Tony Blair sold Megrahi

The former FBI agent who led the Lockerbie investigation has reignited the debate over the bomber's release by accusing Tony Blair of manufacturing Britain's controversial prisoner transfer agreement with Libya to make it happen.

Richard Marquise poured scorn on the UK government's official stance that the infamous "deal in the desert" with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2007 did not relate solely to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

And in a rare interview during a visit to New York's Syracuse University which lost 35 students in the 1988 atrocity, he admitted he believed Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill faced a "difficult decision" after Westminster's meddling.

Mr Marquise said: "When he was released it was not a total shock to those of us involved in the investigation because of the deal in the desert between the British government and the Libyan government about the exchange of prisoners.

"We know that the deal when it was signed only related to Megrahi, it didn't relate to any other prisoners. It talked about exchanging prisoners and he was the only one." He also insisted they had got the right man, despite claims on this side of the Atlantic that Megrahi, controversially freed on compassionate grounds, may be innocent.

Lockerbie campaigner Robert Black, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, said: "As far as the Libyans were concerned the prisoner transfer agreement was always about Megrahi, there was no one else they were even slightly interested in."

However, he branded Mr Marquise's insistence that Megrahi was guilty, as "absolute and utter balderdash."

[I had much more to say to the reporter about Mr Marquise's views, which the Express, as a family newspaper, wisely did not print.

The Sunday Post has an article (again, not on the newspaper's website) about Karen Torley's support for the Justice for Megrahi petition. For twelve years Karen Torley campaigned for the release of Kenny Richey from death row in Ohio. Coincidentally, Kenny Richey was born in Zeist.]