Prime Minister crass to question a man's failure to die

[This is the headline over a letter from Ross Brown of Greenock in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

David Cameron's scathing reference to the 1000th-day anniversary of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison is another example of distasteful and unnecessary political bickering ("Megrahi survival is insult to families", says Cameron", The Herald, May 14, and Letters, May 15).

In the aftermath of the Libyan uprising and the surprising exposure of Colonel Gadaffi as a bad egg, surely our perspectives on who held responsibility for the bombing of Pan-Am flight 107 should have been somewhat altered; the complex power structure within a Libya in the grip of a dictatorship muddies the water to the extent that Megrahi's role as a political scapegoat seems increasingly evident. As the head of a state lacking the death penalty, Mr Cameron's insistence on criticising a questionably guilty man's failure to die is both confusing and crass.

The ongoing focus on Megrahi is now interesting only in terms of highlighting seemingly effective cancer treatment; if indeed there is an absence of a conspiracy based on falsification of his illness, politicians should consider refraining from using the mortality of a cancer-stricken man as a means by which to further their careers.