Please do not let us down

This is the last sentence of a document submitted by the committee of Justice for Meghrahi to the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee in advance of its meeting on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 10.00am in Holyrood’s Committee Room 4, when it will consider how to proceed with JFM’s petition (PE1370) calling for an independent inquiry into the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The committee clerk has suggested that the options open to the Justice Committee are as follows:

(a)  keep the petition open;
(b)  take a view on whether there should be an independent inquiry as proposed by the petitioners;
(c) take any other action the Committee considers to be appropriate (e.g. seek views or take evidence from any appropriate person/body); or
(d) close the petition.

JFM’s submission to the Committee ends with the following two paragraphs:

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure. Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took  precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties. If Hillsborough was England’s shame then  Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the openminded approach of  the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.

“The Justice Committee and through them the Scottish Government presents the best and perhaps only chance that the families who lost loved ones will ever have of uncovering the real truth behind Lockerbie. Please do not let us down.” 

This story is picked up in Saturday's edition of The Herald in a report headlined Lockerbie campaigners call for inquiry.