Even on the brink of death, al-Megrahi
tried to help me discover who really killed my daughter
I first saw Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi on the morning of May 1,
2000. He was below us in the well of the specially convened court at Kamp
Zeist, Holland. Close to us, to one side of the public gallery, sat his wife
Aisha and his family.
Through the bulletproof glass Baset seemed timid in the dock,
never venturing to speak out for himself. Later we learnt that his defence team
had told him to let them do the talking.
We were totally unprepared for the comment from another observer
in the gallery: “How could you sit so near to the filth?” he said. This
profound presumption of guilt was unencumbered by the inconvenience of having
to prove it. Hatred has festered for some, and contributed to the blinding of
many ever since.
Separation from his family was the cruellest consequence of
Baset’s conviction. He loved them dearly, as they did him. Aisha was almost
always present whenever I met her husband once he was out of prison and on
licence in Tripoli, though unlike him, she had no English. Her demeanour
revealed her love for him and her trust towards me, an outsider, who had seen
through the miscarriage of justice. Only near the very end did she leave us
alone together, holding hands, for speech was difficult.
When I first met Baset in Greenock Prison, he was calm but
determined to clear his name. He must have known that we had campaigned for
years to have him tried under Scots law. Yet there was not a word of complaint,
though his cancer, already giving him pain on sitting, was then in evidence. A
devout Muslim, he had a Christmas card from the prison shop ready for me. On it
he had written “Dr Swire and family, please pray for me and my family”. I
treasure it still.
At least before he died we learnt what he already knew: that the
story that a Libyan bomb using a long-running timer had started its journey
from Malta was a myth. The famed fragment “PT35b” could never have been part of
one of the timers allegedly used. There is now no valid evidence left from the
court that either Malta, its flag carrier airline or Baset’s own country were
involved. Baset has a valid alibi and he died knowing that in the end the truth
will emerge.
On release from prison, his valedictory letter made clear that he
attached no blame to the Scottish people for what had happened to him. This,
from a man wrongly segregated from his family for years, and in the grip of a
terrible disease, tells us much about the nature of Baset al-Megrahi. No one
can be sure how much the stress of his terrible predicament affected his immune
system and contributed to the spread of his fatal disease.
Later, when I met him in Tripoli, he was concerned that I as a
victim’s father should get access, on his death, to all the information that
had been amassed to fight his abandoned appeal. He knew that I still grieved
for my daughter and sought the truth as to who had really murdered her. On the
brink of his own death, he found the spirit to empathise with me. That was a
measure of this man.
It is a tragedy that we have failed to overturn the verdict while
he was alive. But we must clear his name posthumously for the sake of truth and
for the future peace of his family. If we do nothing then a great evil will
have triumphed.
There are people in Britain and America who, blinding themselves
to the profound failure of the evidence against Baset, have tried deliberately
to suppress the truth, and even to deny that Baset was mortally sick. Some of
them have clearly done so knowing what they were doing. One can only pray for
them.
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