Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray hits out at the SNP

The revelation that the Lockerbie bomber could have another five years to live has prompted renewed criticism over his release.

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray said it proved the medical evidence which Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s release was based on was flawed.

The party’s chief at Holyrood was speaking during a visit to Dumfries on Monday [15 March] (...)

The attack ... was aimed at the Scottish Government whose Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill approved the release of al-Megrahi in August last year.

Then, Mr McAskill said the killer had only had three months to live.

But at the weekend it was reported that the bomber, now at home in Libya, is taking a cancer-fighting drug which may prolong his life by five years.

Mr Gray told the Standard: “We have asked some pretty serious questions about the medical evidence and it does now look as if the basis of the medical evidence wasn’t particularly sound.

“I felt the decision to release him was wrong for a whole number of reasons but largely because Kenny MacAskill was required by the Scottish justice system, in considering the application for release, yes to take account of how long al-Megrahi was considered to have to live but he was also required to take account of the severity of the crime and the sentence which had been passed.

“It was the worst crime that anybody had ever been convicted of in Scotland and Al Megrahi had served less than a third of a 27-year sentence.

“So to my mind, guessing how long someone has to live is never going to be an exact science but in my view whether he got that right or as it turns out he got it wrong, nonetheless, those two other factors meant the decision should have been not to release al-Megrahi.”

[From a report in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, one of the local newspapers serving the area that includes Lockerbie.]

Keep those newspaper sales going with so-called national fury

[This is the headline over a section in Richard Ingrams's Week in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]

It was not so long ago that Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn announced that the nation was "recoiling in disgust" at the release from prison of the so-called Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi. A few days later, Times journalist Tom Baldwin claimed that much of the world was "shuddering" as Megrahi was given a hero's welcome on his return to Libya.

We have become used to being told that we are recoiling or shuddering over some particular horror. Right now the nation is reported to be reeling with anger or possibly even fury over the news that child murderer Jon Venables, pictured above at the age of 10, may or may not have committed an unnamed offence following his release from prison.

If there is anger, or even fury, you may not have been aware of it as you went about your daily tasks any more than you noticed anyone recoiling in disgust over the Lockerbie bomber.

It would be nice to say that these instances of mass fury exist only in the imagination of journalists. But even that isn't true. No one has imagined fury or anything of the kind. It is a purely cynical exercise designed to drum up sales. The murder of James Bulger would have been forgotten long ago if it had not been for the tabloid press. The same was true of other bugbears like Myra Hindley who was regularly featured on the front pages with reports of nationwide anger about her favourable treatment in prison.

If the nation is going to be angry about anything it would be nice if it could get angry about such cheap sensationalism. Even nicer if it felt like recoiling in disgust. The sad thing is that nobody will be all that bothered.

[A somewhat different attitude is -- unsurprisingly -- displayed in an editorial headed "A terrorist's last(?) laugh" in today's edition of the New York Post. It reads:]

More than six months have now passed since Libyan Lockerbie bomber Abdul Ali al-Megrahi was given a "compassionate" release from a Scottish prison -- because he had less than three months to live.

Not only is Megrahi -- who got life for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 270 -- still alive, but the cancer that allegedly had him at death's door reportedly has stabilized.

So instead of rotting behind bars, Megrahi's apparently living a life of relative ease in Moammar Khadafy's Libya.

Supposedly, he's now taking a chemotherapy drug he couldn't get in prison -- and which might have kept him in stir.

No matter; Megrahi is alive and free, and laughing at Western justice.

And may well be for a while longer.

Fresh demands to see Megrahi medical files after health improves

[This is the headline over a report recently published on The Scotsman website. It reads in part:]

The clamour for full disclosure of the Lockerbie bomber's medical files grew last night after it emerged that the son of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi has claimed that his condition has "greatly improved".

The health and life expectancy of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was the subject of renewed speculation after Saif Gaddafi suggested he was doing much better now that he was home in Libya.

Seven months after the man convicted of the worst mass murder in British legal history was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, Saif Gaddafi said he was in "good condition".

His remarks follow reports that the Libyan intelligence agent, convicted of murdering 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, has been prescribed chemotherapy treatment Taxotere after returning to Libya.

Mr Gaddafi, who is tipped to take over from his father as Libyan leader, told the Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that Megrahi "was sick and was released for humanitarian reasons, and was soon in better health and in a good condition. His future is now in God's hands."

Mr Gaddafi also claimed the convicted killer's release had dominated trade talks with Britain [RB: Britain, not Scotland. As far as I am aware there have been no trade talks between Libya and the Scottish Government or Scottish business interests]. Mr MacAskill has always insisted that Megrahi was released purely on compassionate grounds. (...)

Richard Baker, Scottish Labour spokesperson for justice, said: "It's time for the SNP to stop the secrecy surrounding the medical reasons for this man's return to Libya. If Megrahi is responding to treatment, then it calls further into question his compassionate release by Kenny MacAskill."

Bill Aitken, the Conservative justice spokesman, said: "The longer this goes and the more tales that come out of Libya, the more Kenny MacAskill must be cringeing. We are now over eight months after the prognosis that Megrahi had three months to live. The medical evidence was not nearly sound enough and MacAskill has embarrassed Scotland big time."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "Mr Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer and he was sent home to die based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service Director of Health and the recommendations of the Parole Board and Prison Governor, all of which has been published by the Scottish Government."

Megrahi can live for five years

[This is the headline over a report in today's Scottish edition of The Sun. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie bomber was at the centre of a fresh row last night after it emerged he is taking a cancer-busting drug that could keep him alive for FIVE more years.

Terminally ill Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was prescribed chemotherapy treatment Taxotere after returning to Libya.

But yesterday reports claimed Megrahi wasn't given the drug while he was in Greenock prison - amid claims he could have been kept behind bars if he had taken the medication.

Last night Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken demanded answers from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

He said: "Was the existence of a drug which is reportedly now extending the life of the Lockerbie bomber included in any of the reports Kenny MacAskill read before making the decision to release him?

"Alex Salmond's government is still refusing to publish the independent advice upon which they based their decision." (...)

Yesterday it emerged the prostate cancer sufferer's condition has now stabilised.

A source close to the 57-year-old said: "After his treatments, he can be unwell for two or three days but then enjoys a period when he's quite well."

[The real issue is why the treatment that appears now to be successfully prolonging Mr Megrahi's life was not made available to him while he was a guest of Her Majesty in Greenock Prison. One of the principal reasons advanced by the Crown for opposing Megrahi's application for interim liberation (bail) pending his SCCRC mandated appeal was that the very best of cancer treatment was available to him through the Scottish prison medical service. Indeed, it was largely on this basis that the High Court refused bail. Paragraph 15 of the court's reasons for refusal reads:]

"While the disease from which the appellant suffers is incurable and may cause his death, he is not at present suffering material pain or disability. The full services of the National Health Service are available to him, notwithstanding he is in custody. There is, it appears, no immediate prospect of serious deterioration in his condition. The prognosis for its development is at present uncertain. If he responds well to the course of palliative treatment which he has now started, his life expectancy may be in years. If he does not respond well, that expectancy may be less good. While recognising that the psychological burden of knowledge of an incurable fatal disease may be easier to bear in a family environment than in custody, the Court, having regard to the grave nature of the conviction and taking into account the fact that a reference has been made and the fact that the appeal process is likely to be protracted, is not persuaded that the stage has been reached when early release is appropriate. If the applicant does not respond well to the treatment he is undertaking and the prognosis becomes both more certain and poorer, a stage may then be reached when a different disposal is appropriate. The Court is prepared to entertain a renewed application in such circumstances. In the present circumstances, however, for the reasons which have been given, the application is in hoc statu refused."

Taking another look at the destruction of Pan Am 103

[This is the headline over an article in the March 2010 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassaador Andrew I Killgore. It reads in part:]

In February 1986 Israeli Mossad operatives installed a “Trojan” communications device on the top floor of an apartment house in Tripoli, Libya. The six-foot-long device was able to receive messages on one frequency and automatically rebroadcast the same message on a different frequency—in this case, one used by the government of Libya.

Israeli naval commandos arriving in miniature submarines in the middle of the night had delivered the Trojan, only seven inches in diameter, to the lone Mossad agent in Tripoli, who drove a rented van to their rendezvous point on a deserted beach outside Tripoli. The agent, along with four of the commandos, then took the Trojan to an apartment building in the Libyan capital where he had rented the top floor, and installed the device. By March the Trojan was broadcasting a series of “terrorist” orders to Libyan embassies around the world. (...)

Less than two months after the Trojan was installed, on April 5, 1986, the La Belle nightclub in then-West Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. At the same time a false “success” signal was sent, apparently from the device in Tripoli.

“False-flagged” by Israel, President Ronald Reagan on April 14 sent American bombers from Britain and from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean to strike Tripoli and Benghazi, killing 101 people, including the adopted young daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi when his house in Tripoli was bombed. (...)

The proximity in time between the Lockerbie crash and the shooting down by the USS Vincennes on July 3 of that year of an Iran Air passenger plane over the Persian Gulf, with the loss of 290 lives, presented a perfect “revenge” scenario. That, clearly, was the initial premise of the investigators at Lockerbie. Dr Robert Black, professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University in Scotland, told this writer that, for the first two years following the Pan Am crash, investigators were focused on Iran as having hired Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command to carry out a retaliatory bombing.

In a Jan 28, 2009 article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, however, the late Russell Warren Howe cited the book Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas. Thomas quotes a Mossad source as saying, “Within hours after the [Pan Am 103] crash Mossad’s LAP [psychological warfare or disinformation] staff were working their media contacts, urging them to blame and publicize that ‘Libya-did-it.’”

They could have blamed Iran, of course, but that would have gone against the Israeli grain. Iran was a large, non-Arab Muslim nation — and, as such, always of potential benefit to an Israel heavily outnumbered by the Arabs. Israel had even “done business” with the Islamic Republic a few years earlier, in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. It’s also possible, of course, that the Israelis know Iran was not the guilty party.

The perpetrators of the crime against the passengers and crew of Pan Am Flight 103 had intended that it crash at sea, leaving no physical evidence and no bodies to tell the tale. But turbulent weather over Heathrow Airport had led the pilot of the giant Boeing 747 to steer slightly more northward than usual, so the plane was still over land when it crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland.

The criminals thus had to think fast. A fragment from the alleged bomb trigger device was “found” several days after the crash. However, as the BBC program “Newsnight” reported on Jan 8 of this year, tests aimed at reproducing the blast indicated that no such fragment would have survived the mid-air explosion. The “evidence,” moreover, was placed in a sack which was labeled in a certain way—but the label was subsequently changed by an unknown person, causing suspicion that evidence was being altered. As Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the crash, has written: “Coming from a scientific educational background, I found that it was the forensic evidence at [the trial at Camp] Zeist…which first convinced me that the prosecution case was a fabrication.”

Another astonishing factor was that the Crown (the prosecutors) ignored evidence of a break-in of the Pan Am luggage area at Heathrow early in the morning of that fatal December day. One wonders whether Pan Am had been alerted to security problems at Heathrow by Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, where security is airtight. In an article in the March 1989 issue of the now-defunct Life magazine entitled “The Next Bomb,” Edward Barnes wrote, “in 1986 Yeffet was part of a team commissioned by Pan Am to survey 25 of its branches around the world…Yeffet now runs a security consulting business in New Jersey.”

Dr. Swire, who has described the Court’s conviction of Megrahi as “a cock and bull story,” is not alone in his skepticism. Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the trial, has described the verdict as “incomprehensible,” and Dr Robert Black has denounced the guilty verdict in equally dismissive language.

Thus the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 remains a mystery. If two years of investigating Iran produced no evidence, and the evidence used to convict Megrahi was fake, who was responsible for the horrific crime?

[The past week's absence of posts on this blog was due to my having taken a trip across the border to Namibia. But as far as I can see, little worthy of mention has appeared in the media during my absence.

For those with the stomach for it, a nasty little story in today's edition of the Sunday Mirror headed "The man who will not die ..." can be read here.

Since I posted the link to the piece in the Sunday Mirror, the headline over the report on the newspaper's website has been altered to "Lockerbie bomber Abdul-Basset Al-Megrahi has 30,000 visitors and babies named after him". Can it be that a humble blogger can arouse feelings of shame in a tabloid journalist or sub-editor? Surely not.]

Megrahi's family abandon plans to sell Scottish home

The family of the Lockerbie bomber have abandoned plans to sell their Scottish house.

Experts believe the five-bed, two-storey home in Newton Mearns, Glasgow, has plunged in value by £100,000.

The house has been empty for six months since Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, his wife and five children returned to Libya.

It was bought for £495,000 in 2002 but similar local homes have sold for less than £400,000.

The house owner is named on property records as Megrahi's wife, Aisha. (...)

Paisley-based surveyor Peter McEachran said: "Houses of the same size in the area are selling for around £395,000.

"It may be a while before it can be sold at a profit."

The family chose the house as it was only 30 minutes' drive from Barlinnie Prison, where Megrahi was first held.

[From a report in today's edition of The Sunday Mail.]

From Lockerbie to Zeist

A slightly revised edition of an article by me with this title - originally published in Malta in 2000 in a book edited by Joe Mifsud - now appears on Caustic Logic's The Lockerbie Divide blog. It can be read here.

PM’s silence over Megrahi ‘screw up’

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]

Gordon Brown’s silence on the decision to release Abdel-baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was “a screw up”, a cabinet colleague allegedly said.

The alleged view is reported in The End Of The Party by political journalist Andrew Rawnsley, who has already incurred the wrath of Downing Street over allegations the Prime Minister mistreated staff at No 10, claims vehemently denied by Mr Brown. (...)

Mr Rawnsley writes: “Gordon Brown said nothing at all. He carried on with his holiday in the Lake District and Fife as if nothing unusual was happening.”

The book states key aides were abroad on holiday. “‘We were caught cold. The system failed him. We all failed him,’ said one senior official, who reportedly added: ‘We had no idea about the furtive discussions between the Foreign Office and the Libyans.’”

Mr Rawnsley writes about the unsustainability of Mr Brown’s position, saying the PM was “frozen by fear” that if he expressed an opinion about Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Mr Megrahi on compassionate grounds, he would infuriate either the US, Libya, the Holyrood Government, the victims’ families, the Scottish Labour Party or the oil companies.

I wasn't paid by Libya to lie about al-Megrahi cancer, insists doctor

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Mail, a Scottish Sunday newspaper. it reads in part:]

A doctor has denied he was paid a fortune by the Libyans to say that the Lockerbie bomber was dying.

British cancer expert, Professor Karol Sikora, was one of three specialists hired by the Libyan government to examine Abdelbaset al-Megrahi shortly before his release last August. He said that the Libyan had only three months to live.

This was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds if they are considered to have fewer than three months to live. Yet six months later, Megrahi, 58, is still alive. Yesterday Prof Sikora insisted Megrahiw as gravely ill and not expected to live much longer.

He said: "Some people think we were paid billions of dollars by the Libyans to say he was going to die. The fact is there was no pressure at all on us to say he was going to die.

"On the balance of probabilities, there was a 50 per cent chance he would die in three months. If you saw the clinical detail.he had all the signs.

"I only saw him on one occasion but I went through everything and talked to the prison doctors who had seen him day in, day out.

'I am very surprised that he is still alive. The latest informationl have from Tripoli is that he is not a well man and suspect he will be dead within a month or so."

Missing answers on release of Megrahi

[This is the headline over a letter from Roger Salvesen in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It is a response to last Sunday's article by Kenny Farquharson. The letter reads as follows:]

Kenny Farquharson has second thoughts on the release of Megrahi ... ; I still have many unanswered questions in my mind.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Board had discovered evidence which gave grounds for a second appeal. If Megrahi had been transferred to Libya under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, the appeal would have lapsed. But he was released on compassionate grounds so the appeal could have continued in his absence. But Megrahi specifically asked the Appeal Court to abandon the appeal. Did Kenny MacAskill's visit to Greenock prison have anything to do with this?

Did the grounds for the appeal contain doubts about the safety of the evidence relating to the timing device and the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci? If those doubts had been upheld would that have raised questions about the involvement of the CIA in providing evidence to the original trial?

If Megrahi's health had not been a factor and the appeal had proceeded to a conclusion and found the original conviction unsafe, what would have been the reaction in the United States? Dr Jim Swire and others believed the conviction was unsafe.

If MacAskill had invoked the Prisoner Transfer Agreement would Libya have honoured its terms and held Megrahi in a Libyan prison for the remainder of his 27-year term?

And if that requirement was ignored would the UK have been able to secure the return of Megrahi to Scotland to serve out his sentence?

I would love to think these questions will be answered one day, but I fear that is very unlikely.

Anger at bid by SDL to march on Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It reads in part:]

The far right Scottish Defence League plans to march on the Lockerbie Memorial in a move that has been condemned by politicians of all parties and the families of those who died in the disaster.

The plans by the organisation, which has been holding protests against the "Islamification" of Scotland, were described as "disgraceful" by politicians who also called for the event to be banned.

The SDL has said it intends to hold a "peaceful vigil at the monument, which was built in memory of the 270 people who lost their lives when Pan Am 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988.

The organisation, which has been accused of being racist and fascist, has also chosen the venue in an attempt to get back at the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who spoke against the SDL at a recent Scotland United Rally held in Edinburgh. (...)

In the publicity for the Lockerbie march, the SDL referred to MacAskill's decision to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing.

"This is also a protest against the traitor Kenny MacAskill who denies the SDL free speech and defended the release of the vermin responsible for the Lockerbie outrage," the SDL said.

MacAskill's spokesman said: "It is hard to see how these people with their appalling and racist views could have sunk any lower, but that is what they have done.

Regardless of whether people supported Kenny MacAskill's difficult decision or disagreed with it, people in Lockerbie and across Scotland will come together to oppose this small unrepresentative group, and their disgraceful plans."

Mike Russell, the education secretary and South of Scotland MSP, said the rally was an obscene attempt to exploit the long suffering people of Lockerbie.

[The report on this matter in the News of the World can be read here.]

Lockerbie bomber may beat cancer, say family

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Mail. It reads in part:]

Freed from his life sentence, the Lockerbie bomber was sent home by the Scots on compassionate grounds because he had 'just three months' to live. (...)

Yesterday, his elderly father even held out the prospect of him beating the prostate cancer that doctors said would kill him by last Christmas.

Mr Ali al-Megrahi believes that good genes, 'positive thinking' and alternative medicines could explain his son's remarkable survival.

Megrahi, 57, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending a course of chemotherapy.

Last night, the British cancer specialist who gave the three-month prognosis was forced to defend his prediction. (...)

His father, who is in his early 80s and keeps a vigil at his son's side in the family's plush villa in the capital Tripoli, still believes a 'miracle' could happen.

He said: 'A close relative was diagnosed with a similar disease and he was treated and recovered completely. We hope that Abdelbaset recovers his health as well.

'I think that the sick are not just cured by medicine, but also by having a high morale and a sense of freedom, and these were not available to Abdelbaset in prison.'

Megrahi receives 24-hour nursing care and, though often heavily sedated, receives well-wishers.

The relaxed, peaceful atmosphere has enabled him to more than double his original survival prognosis, and he says he is 'inspired and feeling very positive' thanks to the support of family and friends. (...)

Last July, the Libyan government paid for Megrahi to be examined by three cancer specialists, among them British expert Professor Karol Sikora. It was their prognosis that won his freedom.

Professor Sikora told the Mail: 'I am very surprised that he is still alive. He is not receiving any active treatment. The latest information I have from Tripoli is that he is not a well man, and I suspect he will be dead within a month or so.'

Professor Sikora said he suspected Megrahi was hanging on because he had received a ' psychological' boost from being reunited with his family and countrymen.

Indeed the former Libyan secret service agent and his wife and five adult children are treated like royalty in Libya.

Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, which represents U.S. relatives, said: 'His people tried to have us believe he had one foot in the grave.

'Then to hear that he is doing quite well medically and is living in a luxury villa makes them all the more frustrated.'

Dartmouth College alumnus explains Lockerbie legacy

The legal aftermath of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing incident could serve as a model for establishing formal relationships with nations previously associated with terrorism, according to James Kreindler ... a specialist in aviation accident and terrorist litigation and featured speaker at the discussion, “Lessons from Lockerbie: Terrorism and International Law.” The discussion, which also included government professors Dean Lacy and Dirk Vandewalle, was held in the Haldeman Center on Tuesday [23 February].

The Lockerbie incident is the name given to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. The attack, orchestrated by Libyan terrorists, resulted in the death of 270 individuals, most of whom were Americans. The resulting litigation — in which Kreindler’s law firm sued the Government of Libya and Pan Am airlines on behalf of victims’ families — resulted in the elimination of foreign nations’ sovereign immunity in private US lawsuits and was the first case in which a small group of plaintiffs led the development of a foreign policy issue, according to Kreindler.

The incident drove the international community to work toward the development of concrete policies on how to deal with international terrorism, Vandewalle said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

“Increasingly there is the sense that people who perpetuate [sic] terrorist acts should be accountable,” Vandewalle said. “We should go after these terrorists financially, especially if linked to governments.” (...)

At the time, the victims’ families could not sue Libya because foreign nations were protected by sovereign immunity, Kreindler said.

In 1996, several of the victims’ families lobbied Congress to change the law to permit the victims of terrorism and their families to sue countries that sponsor terrorist attacks, according to Kreindler. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996, allowing the victims’ families to pursue their case against the Libyan government.

“The Libyans could never understand how 270 families could change the law in the United States,” Kreindler said.

Kreindler’s private firm, Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, represented the victims’ families, he said.

“We sued Libya, accusing them of the largest murder of Americans in history,” Kreindler said.

Setting a new precedent, the Justice Department agreed to allow a private firm to pursue litigation against the Libyan government, according to Kreindler. After two years of negotiation, Libya agreed to pay damages of $10 million per death to the victims’ families under several conditions. Libya was to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and UN sanctions against Libya were to be lifted.

In 2006, the US government prematurely removed Libya from the list of state sponsors of terrorism before Libya made its final payment, leaving Libya with no incentive to pay the remainder of the payment, Kreindler said. At that time, Libya was involved in 22 other miscellaneous private lawsuits in US courts.

The subsequent Libya Claims Resolution Act allowed Libya to pay money into a fund for the victims’ families in exchange for the termination of all cases against Libya in US courts, according to Kreindler. The victims’ families received their final payment in December 2008, 20 years after the bombing.

Kreindler expressed confidence that, like Libya, several other countries on the list of state sponsors of terrorism will seek a “clean slate” once removed from the list. He added that these countries will likely be eager to pay into a global fund in exchange for termination of all US litigation.

“This will be the prototype for formalizing relationships with countries such as Iran and Syria,” Kreindler said.

Kreindler received the 2009 Trial Lawyer of the Year award for his work on the bombing.

[From a report on the website of The Dartmouth.]

Swire says Megrahi survival issue distracts from key question: "Was he guilty?"

[This is the headline over a report on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire, spokesman of UK Families Flight 103 says the present debate over the health prognosis of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi distracts from analysis of the "elephant in the room", the guilt or otherwise of Megrahi in the Pan Am 103 incident.

Swire points out that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission stated a miscarriage of justice may have been committed against Megrahi, and it is "desperately important that the conduct and outcome of his trial be re-examined".

"How can we have confidence in our legal system which has itself - through the SCCRC - expressed doubt over the case?" he asks.

"There is 'an elephant in the room' which we ignore, as Holyrood largely did, at our peril. On its flank is written 'WAS HE GUILTY?' We ignore it at the peril of having copious doodoo dumped upon all of us. That would be hard to scrape off."

Swire, a former GP, criticises the debate and points out that Megrahi's health will have naturally improved since his return to his family.

"The opinion of one of the UK's most distinguished oncologists was available to Kenny MacAskill. I have spoken to that specialist and confirmed his opinion. Estimates of likely life span are based on statistics and are pretty useless for application to an individual. 'How long have I got, doc?' is one of the hardest questions for a doc to answer," he says.

"Two highly relevant things happened to Meghrahi's health on his release:

1) he exchanged the stress of a prison cell for the love of his family;
2) he received unspecified intensive treatment in Tripoli.

"There is no way we can discover which of these is the more important in his prolonged survival. To those who wish him dead I would say 'send not to ask for whom the bell tolls' - you might be next.

"The real issue is whether he was ever guilty. The verdict however at present stands unchallenged."

Kenny MacAskill ‘ignored advice on Megrahi’

[This is the headline over a report in today's Scottish edition of The Sunday Times. It reads in part:]

Kenny MacAskill rejected legal advice from his own officials when he freed the Lockerbie bomber, new documents reveal.

Evidence uncovered six months after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi shows the justice minister ruled out transferring the bomber to a jail in Libya, despite being told by government lawyers he was entitled to do so.

MacAskill said at the time he was prevented from using a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) because of an agreement struck between the British and American governments ahead of Megrahi’s trial in 1999 that, if convicted, he would serve his entire sentence in Scotland.

However, a memo to MacAskill on June 15 last year from George Burgess, the deputy director of the Scottish government’s criminal justice department, said that the agreement may have been intended to reassure Libya prior to handing over the Lockerbie suspects that they would not be jailed in America.

Burgess advised that the assurance “may be of less significance now” because a subsequent prisoner transfer deal had been agreed between Britain and Libya and “contrary to the views expressed by US officials and others, may not be sufficient reason alone to prevent transfer under a prisoner transfer agreement”.

In a second paper to MacAskill on August 14, when referring to US expectations that anyone found guilty would be expected to serve their sentence in Scotland, Burgess said: “It is doubtful that this would constitute a legally enforceable ‘legitimate expectation’.”

[Dr George Burgess is an administrative civil servant, not a lawyer. His views on matters of law are no more relevant than those of any other layman. Kenny MacAskill is a lawyer, and has access to professional legal advice from Scottish Government lawyers. This is yet another tendentious non-story from The Sunday Times.]