[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Outside a recent presentation of the Scottish play The Lockerbie Bomber in Malta there was an installation with a rotating base carrying the words "Your Government and mine know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell".
These words were confided in 1989 to a British relative who, like me, had been invited to the US Embassy in London to hear the results of a US presidential inquiry into Lockerbie. No doubt the American who entrusted us with this knowledge was way outside his comfort zone, but so far his message has been vindicated.
The new and detailed analysis from the powerful legal mind of David Wolchover featured in your newspaper raises further well-supported doubts about the case led against the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi at Zeist ("Lawyer claims Rouhani knew of Iran's involvement in atrocity", The Herald, November 13). [RB: I cannot find this article on the newspaper’s website or through Google, but the gist is likely to be similar to this article by Mr Wolchover.] They mesh with and reinforce the devastating evidence contained in the book Megrahi: You are my Jury written by John Ashton and published by Birlinn in Edinburgh in 2012.
Early on the morning of publication of that book No 10 Downing Street issued an allegation that it was "an insult to the relatives". Simple inquiries suggest that there was no legal way that Downing Street could have obtained access to the book's content in advance of its launch.
Twenty-three years lie between these two utterances and I fear they define a great deal about why the truth is being hidden, it is indeed not to do with truth or justice but international politics.
What a shame that Scotland has yet to exhibit the resolution to discover by honest inquiry whether she has been drawn into a maelstrom not of her making. It is to be hoped that this time critics of a powerful new treatise will read it through objectively before describing us as conspiracy theorists or the work as an insult to us.
One of countless things that trouble me about all this is the effect of Privy Council membership in muzzling people, either those who know the truth already or those who may come in to possession of bits of the story. While that may not be the reason why membership is granted it's certainly an effect. The oath is in its terms archaic and I think goes back to the English Queen Elizabeth rather than the United Kingdom one but the meaning is clear. Virtually all the Lockerbie prosecutors and judges are PCs,as are people like Alec Salmond and Kenny MacAskill, in short anyone who might spill the beans.
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