The legacy of Lockerbie

[This is part of the headline over an article published on the website of The Independent on this date in 2009. The following are excerpts:]

The saga of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was already murky enough, but now, to the doubts about the evidence against him, the alleged multi-million payouts to the prime prosecution witness, and the far-from-told story of US and British intelligence involvement, we can add suggestions of secret talks and trade deals, and the possibility that his release was not done in the name of compassionate justice, but that of oil, financial services and hotel-building.

This weekend, suspicious minds don't have to seek very far for the material to construct explanations other than the official ones. There is the meeting in 2007 between Colonel Gaddafi and Tony Blair, then still Prime Minister. Oil and gas deals mingled with the fate of Megrahi (then yet to be diagnosed with cancer), according to the Libyans. There's the meeting between Gaddafi's son and Peter Mandelson in the inevitable setting of a Rothschild villa. The Duke of York, batting for Britain as ever, is involved. There may have been, say some sources, many more meetings between British and Libyan officials – something which, one might think, a simple release on compassionate grounds would not warrant. There are British business leaders now openly rubbing their hands together at the suddenly revitalised opportunity for UK banks, oil interests, security contractors, and stores to move in on Libya's considerable available funds.

And then, underpinning all these, is another conspiracy, the one it all started with – the fact that some group of people somewhere conspired to blow up Pan Am flight 103, and succeeded. Today, 21 years, millions of words of testimony, countless investigations, and a trial on neutral territory under Scottish law later, we are really none the wiser about who murdered Flora Swire, Theodora Cohen, Richard Monetti, Alistair Berkley, Bill Cadman and 265 other victims of Britain's worst terrorist atrocity. And so, given all that is now emerging, doubters of the official line ask: do our governments even want to know who planted the bomb? Do they, perhaps, think that a can of worms is best left unopened in the cause of pacifying former pariah states?

These, then, are the over-heated speculations that have bubbled up in the absence of hard, reliable facts, of which there has always been a shortage in this case. The situation, until last autumn was this: Megrahi, head of security for Libyan Airlines based in Malta, and tied to his country's intelligence services, had been convicted in 2001 on circumstantial evidence of planting the bomb which brought down the American plane over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in December 1988. An appeal was being prepared, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had examined the evidence against Megrahi and found six grounds for a possible miscarriage of justice. The result of this could well have been the release of Megrahi, and avid calls for a re-opening of the case – the 2003 acceptance by Libya of responsibility for the bombing not withstanding.

But Megrahi had been feeling unwell, and in September last year he was taken from HMP Greenock to Inverclyde Royal Hospital for tests. A month later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Meanwhile, the appeal process ground on, getting into court on 28 April this year in Edinburgh. A day later, a prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya, negotiated by Tony Blair as part of thawing relations between the two countries, came into force. The Libyans duly made an application for Megrahi to be moved to a Libyan jail, thereby handing the hottest of legal potatoes to the Holyrood government.

But as Megrahi's cancer was declared terminal, the Libyan applied for release on compassionate grounds. It fell to the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to decide on this. After representations – including the vehemently opposed ones of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and leading figures such as Senator John Kerry – he delivered his decision in 20 minutes on Thursday (...)

The reaction from relatives of US victims was unequivocal. Stan Maslowski of New Jersey, whose daughter Diane died on the flight, said: "This shows a terrorist can get away with murder." British families, meanwhile, were mainly supportive of Mr MacAskill. Martin Cadman, whose son Bill died in the bombing, said: "The trial was a farce. I think he was innocent." Anyone puzzled by this difference need look no further than the coverage of the case against Megrahi down the years. In Britain, doubts about the case against him have been long, and widely, aired. In the US, this has not been so. Thus, the extent of the compassion that people were prepared to extend to Megrahi was largely a matter of whether they felt he was guilty or innocent.

The case against him depended on the testimony of one Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner who says he sold Megrahi several items of clothing that were subsequently found to have been in the same case as the bomb. Mr Gauci was interviewed no fewer than 23 times by investigators, was alleged to have been coached by them, and subsequently said to have received payments of up to $2m from the US. Some, like former Scottish Lord Advocate Lord Fraser, say he is an unreliable witness ("not the full shilling", and "an apple short of a picnic" were his exact words). (...)

In the short term, a lot depends on Megrahi's illness. There must be many in Edinburgh and Westminster who will, without voicing such thoughts, be hoping his cancer runs its vicious course sooner rather than later. For if he were to survive much beyond three months, there would be many, especially in the US, pointing out that expedience, rather than compassion, was what really tempered British justice.

There is no evidence for such dealings, and so, in all likelihood, we will be left with only one true conspiracy: the one that caused it all – the one that sent 270 people to their deaths on a terrifying December night 21 years ago.

Megrahi’s return to Tripoli

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2009:]

The US and UK have reacted angrily to the welcome given in Libya to the Lockerbie bomber, freed from prison on compassionate grounds.

In the US, President Obama said the sight of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi being greeted by a jubilant crowd in Tripoli was "highly objectionable".

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Libya would face new scrutiny.

Muammar Gaddafi has yet to comment but the Libyan leader's son is said to have called the release a "victory".

US and UK authorities say they have warned Libya about the sensitivity of the issue. (...)

Hundreds of people turned out to meet Megrahi's plane as it landed in Tripoli, many waving flags.

Megrahi was met by Col Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, who thanked both the Scottish and British governments for their "brave stance" although the British Government has insisted the decision to release Megrahi was a purely Scottish affair.

The younger Gaddafi added in his statement that there was a "considerable amount of new evidence" to show Megrahi was innocent.

In remarks carried by a Libyan TV channel on Friday, and reported by AFP news agency, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi described Megrahi's release as a "victory".

"Your liberation is a victory that we offer to all Libyans," he said in the footage apparently recorded on Thursday night as he accompanied Megrahi on the flight back from Scotland to Libya.

Megrahi's daughter Ghada told the BBC on Friday that her father was resting at home.

"He's at home with us, he's a bit tired and worn out because it was a slightly long trip for him," she told BBC World Service.

"He was overjoyed with seeing us all again."

Megrahi's elderly mother, his daughter added, was "very excited and happy to see him again".

[RB: There was considerable media outrage at what was characterised as a “hero’s welcome” accorded to Megrahi at Tripoli Airport. A corrective, penned by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi for The New York Times, can be read here.]

Mystery of Lockerbie plane bombing may never be solved

[This is the headline over a report published on the website of The Guardian on this date in 2012. It reads in part:]

The death of the only man to have been convicted of the Lockerbie bombing – when Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Scotland in the week before Christmas 1988, means it is less likely than ever that the full story behind the outrage will be told.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi who died in Tripoli on Sunday, two years and nine months after his release from a Scottish jail, always protested his innocence.

The 60-year-old, whose imminent death had been predicted on several occasions since his return to Libya, had, according to US and UK authorities been a Libyan intelligence officer as well as head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli.

In November 1991, he and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah were indicted in the US and Scotland for the bombing which killed 259 passengers and crew on the Pan Am jet and 11 people on the ground. Libya refused to extradite them, though they were kept under arrest in Tripoli.

However, eight years later they were handed over after complex negotiations that led to their being prosecuted under Scottish law, at a court with three judges but no jury, in the Netherlands. In January 2001, Megrahi was convicted of 270 murders and jailed for life. Fhimah was acquitted.

The Libyan government paid $2.7bn (£1.7bn) in compensation and accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials while not admitting direct responsibility for the bombing. Megrahi was jailed first at Barlinnie, in Glasgow, and later at Greenock. His wife and children moved to Scotland too.

Years of legal wrangling followed, with an appeal rejected in 2002, and a £1.1m investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) that found there were six grounds where a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

A full appeal got under way in April 2009. But it was dropped suddenly the following August, two days before Megrahi was put aboard a plane to Tripoli. Climbing aboard the plane, he wore a white shell-suit to hide body armour. He had been transferred from prison in a bombproof vehicle accompanied by security officers, also wearing body armour and drawing enhanced danger pay.

International furore erupted over the release, with allegations it had been sanctioned by the UK government in order to secure more business and oil deals with the Gaddafi regime. Gordon Brown's administration was forced to admit it had known in advance of the release but that it had been a matter for the Scottish justice system. Nonetheless, David Miliband, then foreign secretary, made no apology for protecting business links with Libya. "With the largest proven oil reserves in Africa and extensive gas reserves, Libya is potentially a major energy source in the future", he told MPs at Westminster. David Cameron always said that Megrahi should have died in jail. (...)

While many relatives of Lockerbie victims remain convinced of Megrahi's guilt, there are some, particularly in Britain, who believe he is innocent.

John Ashton, Megrahi's biographer and author of Megrahi: You Are My Jury, said: "I think there will be moves to reopen the appeal. That has yet to be decided. I would very much hope that his appeal is resurrected and that somebody does make an application to the SCCRC. The people best placed to do this would be his family."

The SCCRC and Megrahi's legal team believe they uncovered a series of critical flaws in his conviction, which made it highly likely he would be cleared by an appeal.

Ashton's biography quotes Megrahi stating he was "framed" for the attack. While he refused to blame Dumfries and Galloway police, he accused the Crown Office of "a blatant breach" of their obligations to disclose all the evidence in the case. "If I was a terrorist, then I was an exceptionally stupid one," Megrahi said.

The grounds of appeal included compelling evidence that the chief prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, had wrongly identified Megrahi and linked him to the bomb which brought down the plane; new evidence that Gauci and his brother were paid very large rewards after the conviction; new scientific evidence disputed evidence that the type of timer in the bomb was solely used by the Libyans; and failure to disclose a break-in at Heathrow airport near Flight 103 which could easily have allowed the bomb to be planted.

Ashton, who had worked as Megrahi researcher during the Libyan's appeal, said he was upset by his death. "We have always expected this day to come; we'd been expecting it for three years, but it's still shattering. It's still pretty shocking. I had come to like him. For all he had been through, there was remarkably little rancour. He was, all things considered, very gracious and never lashed out at those closest to him."

Their claims are rejected by the Scottish and UK governments and the Crown Office, the Scottish prosecution service, which has reopened its investigation into the case after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi and has sought cooperation from the new Libyan civilian government.

The UK and US authorities have repeatedly brushed off claims by campaigners that the bomb was planted by Syrian agents and Palestinian terrorists in revenge for the attack on an Iranian passenger airliner by a US warship.

The Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said: "The Lockerbie case remains a live investigation, and Scotland's criminal justice authorities have made clear that they will rigorously pursue any new lines of inquiry."

Jim Swire, whose daughter was a passenger on Pan Am 103 told Sky News: "It's a very sad event. Right up to the end he was determined – for his family's sake, he knew it was too late for him, but for his family's sake – how the verdict against him should be overturned.

"And also he wanted that for the sake of those relatives who had come to the conclusion after studying the evidence that he wasn't guilty, and I think that's going to happen."

Prisoner transfer agreement “rushed through”

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the politics.co.uk website on this date in 2009:]

The prime minister [Gordon Brown] was accused today of rushing through the ratification of a treaty to protect oil interests in Libya which allegedly involves a 'deal' to repatriate the Lockerbie bomber.

MPs and peers on the joint human rights committee claim they were denied the opportunity to properly scrutinise the treaty with Tripoli.

They accuse government ministers of overlooking human rights in their haste to rush through the agreement with Tripoli and protect British investment.

Justice secretary Jack Straw wrote to the committee in March saying: "Both the foreign secretary and I believe, in the interests of our judicial and wider bilateral relations with Libya, it is important to ratify... a delay beyond April is likely to lead to serious questions on the part of Libya in regards to our willingness to conclude these agreements."

The committee responded: "We... regret that we have been unable to publish a substantive report on the treaty before Easter and, therefore, before ratification."

The Earl of Onslow, a Conservative member of the committee, said: "This is not a good way to deal with matters of justice.

"One shouldn't allow whether one has a right to drill for oil in the Gulf of Sidra to have any influence on what is essentially a criminal matter."

The treaty was allegedly rushed through due to the health of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The Libyan government has long been lobbying for the 57-year-old to be returned to his home country.

Former British ambassador to Libya Sir Richard Dalton said relations with Tripoli would be damaged if Megrahi were allowed to die in prison.

However, he added: "This is first and last a judicial matter."

Last night Hillary Clinton reiterated her opposition to the possible release of the Lockerbie bomber in a strongly worded message to the Scottish government.

The US secretary of state said it would be "absolutely wrong" to release Megrahi.

"We are still encouraging the Scottish authorities not to do so and we hope that they will not," she said.

Earlier this week, a letter was sent from seven US senators including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry to Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, urging him to keep Mr Megrahi behind bars.

The Libyan is currently dying from terminal prostate cancer.

He dropped his second appeal against his conviction on Tuesday - a move which is thought to clear the way for his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

However, a crown appeal against the length of his sentence is still ongoing.

Scotland's finance secretary John Swinney said Mr MacAskill had gone to "significant lengths" to listen to everybody's opinion on the case.

The Scottish justice secretary is due to decide within the next two weeks on an application for Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds, as well as a Libyan government request for a transfer to allow him to serve out his sentence in his homeland.

Not a single shred of evidence the bomb was on the Air Malta flight

[What follows is the text of a report published on the website of The Drum on this date in 2010:]

A claim made in a recent STV documentary about the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bombing has got one Scottish MSP hot under the collar and could lead to a legal threat to STV from Air Malta.

In 1993 Air Malta won an out of court settlement against Granada TV, which claimed a bag containing a bomb had been transported, unaccompanied, on one of their flights. The STV documentary also made this claim.

In a letter shared with independent legal magazine The Firm, [Christine] Grahame said: “I was extremely disappointed when I saw the STV documentary and the one-sided and biased manner in which they recounted the events surrounding the atrocity."

"There remains very serious doubts over the safety of the conviction, but the STV film apparently chose to focus on the controversial and highly disputed claims of the senior investigators. There were a number of misleading statements made in the film, but I think the most worrying from STV's perspective will be the unfounded allegation that the case alleged to have carried the bomb, was transported, unaccompanied, on an Air Malta flight.

“When Air Malta sued Granada TV for making the same unfounded allegation the airline was able to prove that all 55 bags that were loaded onto the flight to Frankfurt were ascribed to passengers. Granada TV were forced to settle out of court and pay costs to Air Malta and to this day not a single shred of evidence has ever been produced showing the bomb was on the Air Malta flight.

“I now understand that Air Malta are considering whether to take similar legal action against STV for repeating this unfounded allegation. Once again the gaping holes in the case raise serious questions over the safety of the conviction and have exposed the superficiality of the recent STV film."

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the air tragedy, has already written to STV pointing out the same factual point.

His letter stated: "May I suggest that you obtain a copy of the court transcripts for your lawyers to study?" he said. "Had I been aware of what you proposed to air, I would of course have warned you. Perhaps it would be best to broadcast a correction to your viewers in the circumstances, but you may wish to 'legal' that."

A spokesperson for STV, commented: "We are absolutely confident that the recent STV documentary reported the facts of the case, as legally established in court.

'I don't want £6m, I want the truth'

[This is part of the headline over a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2003. It reads as follows:]

The brother of a victim of the Lockerbie disaster has vowed to reject a multi-million pound compensation deal from Libya because he does not believe it has been proved guilty of the attack.

Law lecturer Alistair Berkley was a 29-year-old passenger on the New York-bound Boeing 747 which was blown up over the Scottish town on 21 December 1988, killing all 259 on board plus 11 on the ground.

A £1.7 billion compensation agreement was revealed on Friday as part of a package which also included a letter from the Libyan government to the United Nations which has been widely interpreted as an admission of guilt.

The deal amounts to a possible £6.3 million for each of the 270 victims' families, to be paid in stages. About £2.5m will go to each family when the UN lifts sanctions - which could happen as early as next week.

But Matt Berkley, from Hexham, Northumberland, is refusing his share because he does not believe the whole story has been told. He said there was no 'credible evidence' Libya was to blame.

Like many other relatives of those who died, he maintains that the truth about Pan Am Flight 103 is still shrouded in mystery and called on the Government to hold a full public inquiry. There is a strong suspicion among British relatives that the deal was brokered to allow Libya back into the international community and open its markets to Western companies. Colonel Muammar Gadaffi's government has stipulated that the rest of the compensation will be paid when the US lifts its own sanctions and Libya is taken off its list of terror states.

However, Berkley fears that acceptance of the idea that Libya carried out the attack could stifle attempts to launch further investigations into the tragedy which might turn up evidence pointing to the real culprits.

'I went through a process of trying to work out what to do, and it became clear that I would feel bad if I took the money and good if I refused it,' he said. 'I haven't seen what I would consider credible evidence that Libya did it or that any admission by the Libyans would be truthful, rather than simply the result of them being put under enormous pressure by the international community.

'If I sign up, there is a long list of organisations and people that I can't subsequently sue. I don't want to give up my right to sue.'

Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is serving a life sentence in a unit - known as the Gadaffi Cafe - within Glasgow's Barlinnie prison. In January 2001 at a purpose-built Scottish court in the Netherlands he was found guilty of planting the bomb, but his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted.

Megrahi's conviction depended on an identification by a Maltese shopkeeper who said he sold the Libyan items of clothing that were found scattered near the bomb site. Megrahi's legal team is trying to have the verdict quashed and a file is expected to be submitted by Glasgow-based lawyer Eddie MacKechnie to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission within days.

The letter from the Libyan government to the UN states: 'Libya has facilitated the bringing to justice of the two suspects charged with the bombing of Pan Am 103 and accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials.'

Long-term Lockerbie campaigner Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora, died, said: 'The agreement still leaves open the question of the truth behind Lockerbie.'

A cycle of revenge

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Paul Reynolds published on the BBC News website on this date in 2003:]

A Lockerbie-type atrocity in the war-inflicted world of today, might provoke a very different reaction from the superpowers.

A country which blew up an American airliner today could not expect the patient treatment accorded to Libya over the 15 years since Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie.

It could expect invasion.

What happened to Libya after Lockerbie is an example of how a crisis was dealt with by diplomacy, threats, sanctions and law. (...)

Such a broad approach would be unlikely today. We are living under different international rules since 9/11.

Back in 1988, under President Reagan, international terrorism was considered a problem, a plague even, but not a war.

Libya was an active player. In 1984, its "People's Bureau" in London had shot at demonstrators in the square outside, killing a policewoman standing with them.

In 1986, a bomb exploded in the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, used by US servicemen there. Libya was blamed.

And the United States, under Ronald Reagan, retaliated not by invading, but by raiding.

It sent 16 F111's based in Britain to attack and only narrowly missed getting Gaddafi himself, killing instead a young girl said to be his adopted daughter.

One interesting sidebar to that raid was the doubt expressed by the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In her memoirs she makes it clear that initially she had her reservations:

"I was worried that the US action might begin a cycle of revenge.

"I was concerned that there must be the right public justification for the action which was taken, otherwise we might just strengthen Gaddafi's standing."

Mrs Thatcher was worried about "an inclination to precipitate action in the United States, which was doubtless mirrored there by a perception of lethargy in Europe".

In the end, she swung behind her friend President Reagan and gave permission for the F111's to be used from their British base. (...)

At the time, war was not really contemplated.

Even Ronald Reagan, who could whip up small civil wars in Central America into a Soviet threat to the United States, was content to send in the jets.

So when the Pan Am plane was brought down over Lockerbie, there was no clear American strategy for dealing with international terrorism.

Pinprick attacks had been met with pinprick responses.

There had been invasions of Grenada and Panama was to follow but Libya was a bigger place, an Arab country and not in America's back yard.

There was, for President Bush senior, the added complication that nobody could be immediately blamed.

The suspicion in fact fell first on Syria and Iran.

An Iranian airliner had been shot down over the Gulf a few months earlier by the US Navy which thought itself under attack.

Lockerbie was felt to be revenge for that.

At that time Syria and Iran were close and attention turned to the Syrian sponsored Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC. It had been found by German police to be in possession of radio cassettes of the type used in the Lockerbie bombing.

Then the link was made to Libya through a circuit board sold by a Swiss firm, a bit of which was also found on the ground near Lockerbie.

In due course, one Libyan was found guilty by the Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands and another acquitted. Sanctions were imposed by the UN.

But there was no war. And Colonel Gaddafi remained in power.

He has had to pay a price.

He was isolated for years and became a minor actor on a stage which he wanted to bestride.

He had to admit blame, though in a roundabout way (accepting responsibility for the actions of Libyan government officials) and he is having to pay large amounts of money.

He might well think he got off cheaply considering what has happened in Iraq.

[RB: Eight years later, of course, Lockerbie was one of the pretexts for UK and US military and political support for the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.]

Megrahi may have been denied justice, the relatives of the dead certainly have been

[What follows is the text of an article by Paul Vallely that was published in The Independent on this date in 2009:]

There has been some very muddled thinking in the debate over whether the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing should now be freed. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi – the former Libyan intelligence officer who is serving life for murdering 270 people when a bomb exploded on Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 – has terminal prostate cancer. Some say he should be released early on compassionate grounds; others because he may well not be guilty of the crime anyway. Others insist he must die behind bars.

It is worth trying to disentangle the arguments here. A society imprisons criminals for a variety of reasons but the main four are: to exact retribution, to restrain villains from committing more crimes, to deter others, and to offer individuals the chance of reform and rehabilitation. Where a prisoner is dying, clearly the notions of restraint and reform can be discounted. That leaves retribution and deterrence.

The word retribution has pretty pejorative connotations in common parlance. It sounds primitive and vindictive. Yet it performs an important function even in a sophisticated community. Offences do not just harm individuals; they do some violence to the social fabric. Retribution is part of how a society restores the equilibrium which the offence disturbed. But in doing that it is important, as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued, that punishment must be proportionate.

The Lockerbie bomb was the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in Britain. It is appropriate that the punishment for that reflects the abhorrence people felt at the outrage, and not just in the UK. It is interesting, therefore, that the most vehement reaction to the news that al-Megrahi might be freed has come not from the relatives of the Brits who died, but from the families of the American victims. Most of those who were blasted out of the sky at 31,000 feet were US citizens, which is perhaps why the blow to the American national psyche appears to have been greatest.

There is a political dimension, too, to the idea of deterrence in this case. "Freeing Megrahi," one relative said, "would send a message that terrorism is not being taken seriously." Demonstrating compassion would entrench in the minds of al-Qa'ida and other violent jihadists the idea that the West is soft and decadent and lacks the stomach for mortal combat. Releasing Megrahi could be misconstrued as a kind of weakness.

But there is a danger in confusing mercy with weakness. Justice and mercy are not always in tension. Compassion does not indicate indulgence toward evil or tolerance of injury. Rather it can be a demonstration of the civilised confidence of a society which does not respond to violence with violence of its own. Showing compassion to those who refused to extend compassion to their victims does not necessarily undermine justice. It may sometimes strengthen it.

If it is key to the concept of retribution that it should be proportionate – that the punishment should fit the crime – then there is a powerful argument for suggesting that the compassionate release of a dying man is part of that sense of proportion. Prisons are not hospitals and lack the medical and social facilities routinely available to those who are dying. To withdraw those from a dying prisoner is not to exact the punishment decreed by a court but in some way to extend it. A core element in retribution is the idea that the criminal gets what he deserves. Very few people deserve to die in a cage.

So the argument for releasing Megrahi early obtains even if he is indubitably guilty. He should be allowed home to die. Proportion is important here too. Permission for early release was denied when his lawyers first applied in 2008 after doctors told judges that, with adequate palliative care, Megrahi could live for several years. Early release requests are normally only granted where a prisoner has fewer than three months to live, and that seems proportionate too. If Megrahi is that close to death he should be released.

All this is quite separate from the question of Megrahi's protested innocence, and yet that is not entirely irrelevant either. There are potent arguments both ways on his guilt or otherwise, and differing views are held among individuals who have paid far closer attention to the case than have most of those now offering ready opinions.

It may sound more plausible, as some US intelligence reports have suggested, that it was not Libya behind the bombing but Iran; the Lockerbie bomb happened just five months after a US warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing all 290 on board, many of them pilgrims bound for Mecca – prompting the Ayatollah Khomeini to announce that the skies would "rain with blood" in revenge. But those who have most closely scrutinised the detail of the case have formed polarised opinions.

On the one hand, a panel of three Scottish judges considered the evidence against Megrahi for 78 days and unanimously found him guilty. On the other hand, many of the British relatives of those who died, who have studied the evidence in most detail, believe Megrahi to be innocent. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the attack, has described the Libyan's conviction as "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in history".

It now looks as though we may never know the truth. Megrahi has dropped his appeal against conviction, possibly to expedite his return to Libya, possibly because he is now too ill to fight on. Justice delayed is justice denied, the old legal aphorism has it. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi may – or perhaps may not – have been denied justice. But the relatives of the dead certainly have been - for they have now lost the only remaining vehicle which might have brought them, 21 years after the event, somewhere nearer finding out who really killed their loved ones.