Friday 2 August 2024

"... he was sent back home to save any further investigation"

[What follows is excerpted from a long article published today on the website of the Daily Record about the career of former Conservative MP and MEP John Corrie:]

One world-changing event looms large in John’s memory – the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988.

English doctor Jim Swire lost his daughter Flora in the atrocity and became convinced that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the Libyan convicted of the atrocity – was innocent.

“I took him to Brussels at his behest,” John recalls.

“He was convinced that Iran and another Middle Eastern country carried out the bombing in revenge for the shooting down of the Iranian 747 by the USS Vincennes.

“Jim was always convinced it was not Gadaffi or al-Megrahi who were responsible.

“I went to see Megrahi’s family in Libya but they would not let me see him because he was so ill.”

I ask John whether the Scottish court was right to convict al-Megrahi,– who was released from prison by Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill on compassionate grounds – but he keeps his counsel.

“As far as I am concerned he was sent back home to save any further investigation,” he says, after consideration.

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