Thursday 28 July 2011

Megrahi report 'will be published'

[This is the headline over a Press Association news agency report just published on the website of the Kirriemuir Herald. It reads as follows:]

The First Minister has reaffirmed his intention to publish a confidential report which raises questions over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber.

Alex Salmond said legislation will be brought forward early in the next Scottish Parliament to allow the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to publish its statement of reasons for referring Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's conviction back to senior judges at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh.

The appeal was ultimately dropped before Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds almost two years ago because of a prognosis that he had terminal cancer and may have had just three months to live.

Speaking after a summer meeting of the Cabinet in Fort William, Mr Salmond said: "I intend to publish in full the findings of the SCCRC. It hasn't been done to date because under the current law you have to have an agreement from all parties... it hasn't been possible to secure the agreement from all parties and therefore the statement is in limbo.

"However, we believe that we can change the law so that the matter can be published under the full discretion of the SCCRC, and that is what we intend to do."

He continued: "My own feeling is that this statement, insofar as anyone can ever have questions answered about this, will give more important information to people who have got a legitimate interest in the case."

He added: "If I paraphrase the issue, the SCCRC believe that the forensic evidence that Scottish investigators brought forward was sound. It was actually a triumph for forensic investigation. However, they raised question marks about the identification evidence that was brought forward during the trial, and they wanted this tested before a court of appeal."

The Scottish Government came under renewed criticism for releasing Megrahi by Foreign Secretary William Hague on Wednesday when video footage of Megrahi attending a rally in war-torn Libya emerged.

Commenting on the footage, Mr Salmond said: "Let's be clear. I don't think Mr Megrahi should be out running rallies, but I think it's pretty evident from the pictures that this is somebody who's in a very severe medical condition.

"Mr Megrahi is going to die of terminal cancer. Are we meant to want to accelerate his death? I'm not quite certain where the question goes. If someone has got terminal cancer, he will die of that illness."

[This news agency report was posted as a comment to an earlier blog post by Grendal, to whom I am grateful. Rolfe responded to that comment as follows:]

Regarding that last post, perhaps somebody needs to point out to Alex Salmond that the forensic work of the Scottish officers contributed precisely nothing to the incrimination of Megrahi.

Harry Bell contributed a lot to the "lean on Tony Gauci till he says what we want to hear" effort, of course. And there was the bizarre assertion that Megrahi had somehow levitated an invisible suitcase on to KM180, all without actually going airside. But hey, that wasn't forensics either.

So if that's all he's worried about, let him have it. The Scottish forensics effort was stellar. Just acknowledge the rest of the dreck that happened afterwards.

[There is still no explanation given of why primary legislation is being resorted to in order to permit publication of the SCCRC report. It can, and should, be done by Statutory Instrument (secondary legislation) just as the the Scottish Government did earlier when it permitted publication but only if those who supplied the information to the SCCRC consented. An unqualified permission to publish can be given through exactly the same legal mechanism as the earlier qualified permission.]

8 comments:

  1. Mr Salmond said: "If I paraphrase the issue, the SCCRC believe that the forensic evidence that Scottish investigators brought forward was sound. It was actually a triumph for forensic investigation."

    No. It was actually a triumph for the timer fragment fabricator Thomas Thurman!

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  2. "However, we believe that we can change the law so that the matter can be published under the full discretion of the SCCRC, and that is what we intend to do."

    You can change the law Alex? It was YOUR Justice Minister who prevented the SCCRC from publishing in the first place.

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  3. "The First Minister has reaffirmed his intention to publish a confidential report which raises questions over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber."

    The ONLY person who made this report "confidential" was MacAskill. It should NEVER have been afforded that status.

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  4. Full disclosure is good, it would be progress towards the goal. Better late than never.

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  5. Srange the same expert "Professor Tim Valentine" who disputed the Identification evidence against Megrahi was recently rejected in the appeal of Wullie Gage.
    Lord Gill rejected him as an expert.

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  6. Surely Mr Megrahi was given a copy of his statement of reasons as is the custom of SCCRC ?
    Is there anything to stop him publishing this ?

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  7. I have always believed that, interests of justice aside, it would be good for Salmond, MacAskill, the SNP and Scotland's long term reputation abroad if the world came to view Megraghi as not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing and have been a bit puzzled as to why an SNP government should be so keen to keep the file so tightly shut.
    For me, the most likely reason is their perceived need to protect the reputations of new and perhaps politically essential allies in the Scottish legal establishment.
    So perhaps Mr Salmond's comments on Scotland's "triumph for forensic investigation" is the start of this process.
    It will require all of Alex's famed guile and political nous to portray Scotland's role in the Lockerbie investigation and trial as anything close to pure and clean!

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  8. Grendal

    "It will require all of Alex's famed guile and political nous to portray Scotland's role in the Lockerbie investigation and trial as anything close to pure and clean!"

    It will also make him a liar. The issue of Lockerbie, for Salmond, and MacAskill for that matter, should not be one where guile belongs. There has been enough of that and they both know it.

    When the SCCRC first announced it had found six grounds to suggest a miscarriage of justice may have occurred at the trial the SNP had just arrived as a government.

    I confess that I personally found this exciting because I would have laid money on the SNP never supporting the establishment deception over Lockerbie. If anyone could have shoved the judicial and political establishments aside it was Salmond in 2007. He looked to be about to start when he warned Blair off trading with Libya using Megrahi as a bargaining tool. There was an appeal, Salmond pointed out. Megrahi was Scotland's business not Blair's.

    Alas for reasons best known to themselves Salmond and MacAskill were to become part of the establishment plan, over the next two years, to release Megrahi, yes, but more importantly to make sure the appeal never saw the light of day. More than that, MacAskill also made sure the SCCRC report didn't see the light of day either.

    We have all heard about governments keeping things hidden. Salmond used to hate such things and was not afraid to condemn Westminster governments for earlier deceptions when dealing with that body he likes to call "the Scottish people". And yet he was to assist Westminster to the hilt in making sure the truth about Lockerbie stays hidden and the man almost certainly wrongfully convicted stays guilty. Alex Salmond is clearly not the man many of us thought he was.

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