[The following is an excerpt from an item posted earlier today by bensix (a frequent commentator on this site) on his blog Back Towards The Locus.]
Those of you who’ve followed my pieces on Lockerbie may not be too surprised to hear that there’s been no real progress. In a culture of frenetic, fevered news updates one might imagine that important things can be distinguished by how much airtime and column space they’re given. This is a bit like thinking you can winkle out the deepest insecurities of a person as they’ll always talk about them.
Anyway, the Scottish Government first claimed they didn’t have the power to hold an inquiry into Megrahi’s conviction. Now, as hundreds of people and the Scots [Public] Petitions Committee echo Justice for Megrahi's call they’ve admitted that they do have the power to – just not enough for it to be effective. And besides, they add, perhaps thinking if no one’s called their bluff so far they’ll get away with anything, “the Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi".
Alas ... not only was the verdict based on meagre and largely discredited evidence, it was disputed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. And if the SCCRC could reach that bold conclusion with the power it wields why can’t the Scottish government? It’s akin to a hulking bodybuilder moaning that he can’t possibly lift a weight while his younger brother gaily juggles with it in the background. Even if the verdict was sincere this is grubby stuff.
Thanks for the link, Robert.
ReplyDelete[I just posted somethin similar on yer man's blog]
ReplyDeleteDespite the heavy questioning that we've come to expect on Desert Island Discs, today, Kirsty Young could not get Alex Salmond to admit releasing Al Megrahi was a bad idea. I had to laugh she had the cheek to ask that question (like she's a real journalist - dizzy bint)...as if he would wait and suddenly choose the most innocuous program ever devised as a time to make a revelatory statement such as, he made a mistake about the Libyan's release.
Is it just me - why is my will to live being eroded by the mediocrity and amateurism of the media on this subject?
I wonder if we have such a thing as a real journalist in the country today Blogiston. Or real newspaper editors either. Evidently not when they have ignored the obvious in the Megrahi case in order to write screeds since August last year about the release of the "Lockerbie Bomber" and ignored the evidence available to all that the man was almost certainly innocent. You can hardly put it down to all of them being "dizzy bints".
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