"Our justice system is not in safe hands"

[Today’s edition of The Herald carries an editorial which is highly critical of the performance of the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill.  It reads in part:]

The Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has few friends in the legal profession right now, not least because of his determination to abolish the centuries-old requirement of corroboration in rape cases. [RB: The proposal is to abolish the requirement of corroboration in all criminal cases, not just rape cases. The debate has been bedevilled by the concentration of the media and others on sexual offences.]

Now MSPs on the influential Holyrood Justice Committee have poured scorn on his handling of the merger of Scottish police forces. (...)

There is every indication that the Scottish Government has been seeking to sweep the problems of Police Scotland under the carpet so that they do not interfere with the referendum campaign.

However, the affair raises more troubling questions still about the handling of the justice brief by Mr MacAskill. His eye has not been on the ball. He is too keen on passionately promoting crowd-pleasing measures like the abolition of corroboration, which many lawyers and human rights campaigners fear could lead to miscarriages of justice. Mr MacAskill finally bowed to pressure last month and agreed a one-year review, which many hope will see corroboration reprieved. But even criticism from within his own party ranks has not shaken the Justice Secretary's dogmatic belief in this measure. (...)

Our justice system is not in safe hands. Mr MacAskill's headstrong and sometimes belligerent approach, most notably in his refusal to heed advice in the Lockerbie affair, is damaging the credibility of Scottish law. It is time that he moved on to another, less high profile, Cabinet position.

[I am baffled by the reference to Kenny MacAskill’s refusal to heed advice in the Lockerbie affair. If it is his release of Abdelbaset Megrahi that is being alluded to, there is no evidence whatsoever that Mr MacAskill refused to heed the advice of those whom it was his legal duty to consult.  In other aspects of the Lockerbie affair (eg the refusal to institute an independent inquiry, the refusal to make arrangements for the Justice for Megrahi allegations of criminality in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial to be investigated otherwise that by the very police service that, amongst others, was being accused) the just criticism of Kenny MacAskill is that he too slavishly followed advice (from the Crown Office -- its own personnel amongst those accused of criminality -- and from his departmental civil servants).]

Kenny MacAskill pressed to share reports on Megrahi's health

[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill is under pressure to prove the Lockerbie bomber is close to death, with the six-month anniversary of his release coming up next week.

There are increasing calls for Mr MacAskill to publish the latest medical reports on Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. (...)

Until this week, Mr MacAskill refused to confirm whether he was monitoring Megrahi's health. And last week when asked in the Scottish Parliament about Megrahi's health by Labour MSP Lord George Foulkes, Mr MacAskill compared people waiting for the terrorist's death to "vultures".

In a written answer to Lord Foulkes published this week, the minister has admitted he is receiving updates from East Renfrewshire Council which has responsibility for checking whether Megrahi is following the terms of his conditional release and monitoring his health.

Lord Foulkes said: "I think that Mr MacAskill is getting more nervous. He may accuse people of being vultures for taking an interest in this, but I think he realises that the longer Megrahi lives, the more ridiculous his flawed decision to release him looks."

Lord Foulkes is also demanding that medical reports received on Megrahi are made public to provide evidence that Megrahi really only has a short time to live.

The demand has been rejected by the Scottish Government.

A spokesman for Mr MacAskill said: "The justice secretary sent Mr al-Megrahi back to Libya to die based on the recommendations of the Parole Board and prison governor, and the medical report submitted by the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care.

"As was said at the time, he may die sooner or may live longer, but he is dying of terminal prostate cancer."

[The evidence that the newspaper provides for there being "increasing calls" for publication of medical reports is a question and comment by a single MSP, Lord Foulkes, a well-known Labour rent-a-quote.

The many readers' comments that follow the article on the newspaper's website provide perhaps a more accurate reflection of Scottish public opinion on the issue.

A letter from Malcolm Ewen published in The Scotsman on 11 February, reads as follows:]

At no time has justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, "had less than three months to live" (your report, 10 February). Lord George Foulkes's belief that Mr MacAskill "is getting more nervous" because Megrahi is still with us almost six months on is unlikely, given that he followed the correct procedure on compassionate release.

Mr MacAskill actually said: "A report ... from the director of health and care of the Scottish Prison Service indicates that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate."

Kenny MacAskill to make statement on claims he advised Megrahi to drop appeal

[This is the headline over a report published this evening on the STV News website.  It reads in part:]

Kenny MacAskill is to make a statement to Holyrood in the wake of claims he advised the Lockerbie bomber to drop his appeal to smooth the way for his release.

The allegations, strongly denied by the Scottish Government, are contained in a new book about the bomber which was published on Monday.

In the wake of the allegations, the Justice Secretary, who controversially freed Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009 on compassionate grounds, faced calls from opposition politicians to make a statement to Holyrood.

He will now do that, and answer questions from MSPs on the matter, on Wednesday afternoon.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Scottish Government categorically denied that it "had any involvement of any kind in Mr Al-Megrahi dropping his appeal".

The spokesman insisted that had been "entirely a matter for Mr Al-Megrahi and his legal team".

He also branded the book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by writer, researcher and TV producer John Ashton, as being "third-hand hearsay".

Mr MacAskill decided to free the Libyan - the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 which killed 270 people - on compassionate grounds. (…)

Mr Ashton's book claims Mr MacAskill met a delegation of Libyan officials ten days before announcing his decision, including foreign minister Abdulati al-Obedi.

In the book, Megrahi said: "Obedi said that towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, he stated that MacAskill gave him to understand that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal."

Mr Ashton, who studied the Lockerbie case for 18 years and spent three years as a researcher with the bomber's legal team, said yesterday: "Mr Megrahi makes clear in the book that it was made clear to him by the Libyan official who met with Mr MacAskill that it would help his case for compassionate release if he dropped his appeal."

The author added that Megrahi "felt very strongly that dropping the appeal would help his application for compassionate release".

Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats all called on Mr MacAskill to make a statement to the Scottish Parliament in the wake of the book's allegations.

However the spokesman for the Scottish Government said on Monday the claims in the book were "wrong".

They added: "Officials were present at all meetings the Justice Secretary had on this matter at all times."

[A shorter report can be read here on the BBC News website.

Abdelbaset Megrahi does not claim in the book that Kenny MacAskill directly advised or pressurised him to drop his appeal.  The advice is said to have been conveyed through Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, then the Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister with special responsibility for European relations.  Of all the Libyan officials with whom I had dealings over the years, Obeidi was the most trustworthy and transparent. However, he was very keen indeed to secure the repatriation of Megrahi in time for the fortieth anniversary of the Gaddafi revolution. My suspicion (for which I have no evidence whatsoever) is that Obeidi may have misunderstood something that MacAskill said to him or have interpreted something neutral through the prism of his desire to achieve Megrahi's return to Libya. I also know that Obeidi still had a lingering feeling that repatriation would ultimately be achieved through prisoner transfer, which he was under the impression (not unjustifiably) had been agreed to by Tony Blair in the "deal in the desert". For prisoner transfer, of course, abandonment of the appeal was essential.  I had on several occasions informed Obeidi that Tony Blair was not in a position to secure transfer of a prisoner in a Scottish prison; but I was never wholly confident that he actually got the message. "But Tony told us!" was a frequent refrain.]

MacAskill accused of cashing in on Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report published in today’s edition of The Times. It adds nothing whatever to the story in yesterday’s edition of the Daily Mail and, once again, contains comments exclusively from US, not UK, Lockerbie relatives. It reads in part:]

Relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims are angry that Kenny MacAskill, the former Scottish justice secretary, is to profit from a book about his decision to release the man convicted of the atrocity.

In The Lockerbie Bombing: the Search for Justice Mr MacAskill explains his decision in 2009 to release Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.

His publisher will not reveal whether Mr MacAskill received an advance or what he would do with any royalties.

Relatives of some of the 270 people who died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down over Lockerbie in 1988 criticised his decision to make a profit.

Rosemary Mild, 74, whose stepdaughter Miriam Wolfe, 20, died, told the Daily Mail: “It is blood money when this man is profiting in this way — it is disgusting. Kenny MacAskill should have been forced to resign at the time of al-Megrahi’s release because what he did changed the way Scotland was regarded in the US and around the world. It was an abomination of justice.”

It is understood that Mr MacAskill’s book will be published in hardback on May 26 and will retail for £20.

Susan Cohen, an American who lost her daughter, Theodora, in the bombing, said: “It is totally self-serving of Kenny MacAskill to write this book. It is loathsome and disgusting.

“He is profiting from a decision which caused absolute outrage around the world, profiting from other people’s pain. If he is so convinced he made the right decision, why does he feel the need to attempt to justify it?”

Mr MacAskill, the former SNP member for Edinburgh Eastern at Holyrood, said recently that he wrote the book to “set the record straight” and added: “What I can say, without disclosing the full contents of the book, is that I knew we were a cog in a wheel.

“What I didn’t realise was how small a cog and how big a wheel. I think what comes out of this is that others should hang their head in shame and none of them is in Scotland.” (...)

A spokesman for Biteback Publishing said: “I can’t comment on the question of [whether he received] an advance, or what Kenny intends to do with any proceeds, as these arrangements are strictly between author and publisher.”

Mr MacAskill was not available for comment last night.

Kenny MacAskill rapped over Megrahi release

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

The justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, is accused of mishandling the release of the Lockerbie bomber in a damning report to be published next week.

The findings of the Scottish parliament’s justice committee are expected to include strong criticism of MacAskill’s decision to visit Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in prison before he was freed and of his failure to secure assurances from the Libyan government that the bomber would not return to a hero’s welcome.

The draft document suggests MacAskill failed to consider adequately the feelings of the victims’ families before releasing the former intelligence officer on compassionate grounds last autumn.

Committee members viewed the prison visit as unnecessary, suggesting he could have accepted representations from Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, in writing. They believe the minister was insensitive, given that he spoke to the US relatives of victims of the bombing by video-conference rather than visiting them.

When Megrahi returned home to Libya he was greeted by cheering crowds waving saltires. The scenes angered the relatives of those who died and led to threats of an American boycott of Scottish goods.

“The report will be highly critical of MacAskill,” said a source close to the committee. “It will make very embarrassing reading for him and the Scottish government by focusing yet more attention on one of Scotland’s darkest days. After the international and domestic outrage that the government’s decision caused it just wants to make the issue disappear.”

Labour members do not believe MacAskill followed Scottish prison service guidelines in freeing Megrahi. They insist he should have sought a second opinion on the prognosis that Megrahi had three months to live.

Only a prison doctor was willing to state that Megrahi would be likely to die in three months’ time, while four cancer specialists refused to back that opinion. (...)

A spokesman for MacAskill said: “The justice secretary followed due process every step of the way, and has repeatedly expressed his deepest sympathy for the relatives of all victims of the Lockerbie atrocity.”

A separate Commons inquiry by the Scottish affairs select committee is considering whether dealings between the UK government and Libya led to the prisoner transfer agreement which put Megrahi’s case on MacAskill’s agenda.

In Seeking Gaddafi, a book to be published next week, Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski calls on the government after the general election to hold a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing.

[1. Once Kenny MacAskill -- presumably after taking advice from officials -- decided to allow face-to-face (and not just written) representations from relatives of those killed on Pan Am 103, he was legally obliged to offer the same opportunity to Mr Megrahi. A failure to do so would have been a breach of the rules of natural justice and would have made any decision reached vulnerable to successful judicial challenge.

2. Four cancer specialists may very well have refused to give a precise time for Mr Megrahi's life expectancy. This is not in the least surprising and is not sinister. Cancer specialists in practice always refuse to do so, taking the view that their job is to make the patient's remaining time as comfortable as it can be, however long or short that time may be. If the patient (or his family) needs to have an estimate of how long remains to him, it is the general practitioner who is likely to provide it, on the basis of the opinions and reports of the specialists. This is precisely what happened in Mr Megrahi's case.

3. If the justice committee's report does indeed criticise Mr MacAskill on these grounds next week, it will be yet another sad instance of the party political posturing that has characterised the stance of the Labour and Conservative opposition at Holyrood over this issue.]

MacAskill is saying that at Camp Zeist, diplomacy and politics trumped justice

[What follows is the complete text of James Robertson’s review of Kenny MacAskill’s The Lockerbie Bombing. The shorter version published in The Herald can be read here.]

In May 2000, two Libyan citizens, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, went on trial before a specially convened Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. They were accused of acting in concert to place a bomb contained in a suitcase on a plane flying from Malta to Frankfurt; the suitcase was then transferred as unaccompanied luggage to another flight going to London Heathrow, and there transferred again to Pan Am flight 103, the target, which was blown up, en route to New York, over the town of Lockerbie on the evening of 21 December 1988. All 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people on the ground, were killed.

In January 2001, the court acquitted Fhimah, but found Megrahi guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He remains the only person convicted of involvement in the bombing. To many people, the verdict did not make sense then, and subsequent revelations have only reinforced a widespread belief that Megrahi was the victim of a shocking miscarriage of justice.

This book is former Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny MacAskill’s account of the atrocity, of the subsequent investigation and trial, and of his own part in what followed. In 2009, it fell to him, in his ministerial role, to decide whether to grant Megrahi, who was by then suffering from terminal prostate cancer, compassionate release from prison. That decision – to allow Megrahi to go home to Libya to die – forms the centrepiece of Mr MacAskill’s narrative, but it is not the most revealing part.

The book suffers from Mr MacAskill’s inflated and syntactically-challenged writing style: ‘The investigation, meanwhile, marched meticulously on. The dynamics of both tension and camaraderie between various agencies continued, though in the main all worked well with each other.’ The narrative is scattered with words like ‘literally’ (bodies were ‘literally destroyed, smashed to smithereens’), and ‘doubtless’ (a prop for assertions unsupported by any evidence). Mr MacAskill deprives many of his sentences of verbs, and fattens others with clichés. Readers who might reasonably expect a full set of references to back up his account of this long, controversial and unfinished story, will be disappointed: there is no index, no bibliography and, of the 93 footnotes, 67 come from just four sources, one of these being the Scottish Government’s own website. A cover quotation from Clive Stafford Smith, the human rights lawyer, credits Mr MacAskill with a ‘forensic attention to detail’. I beg to differ.

None of this would matter if Mr MacAskill were writing about UFOs or his favourite movies. His subject, however, is the biggest criminal case in Scottish legal history – an event he chooses to describe on page 1 as ‘one of the greatest whodunnits of all time’. It matters greatly that a trained lawyer should use imprecise and careless language to discuss complicated questions of evidence. It matters, for example, that, in referring to the timer which the court at Camp Zeist accepted was used to detonate the bomb, Mr MacAskill calls it ‘the MST-13 model, known as an ice-cube timer’. In fact, MST-13 timers and ‘ice-cube’ timers were completely different, and that difference – as the court’s judgement made clear – was crucial to the prosecution’s case. If the bomb was triggered by an ‘ice-cube’ timer – as many critics of the investigation believe it was – then had it been loaded in Malta it would have exploded between there and Frankfurt, rather than 38 minutes after takeoff from Heathrow. Such a basic mistake does not inspire confidence that Mr MacAskill has a full grasp of his subject.

His publishers, Biteback Publishing – owned by Lord ‘Call Me Dave’ Ashcroft and former blogger and Conservative candidate Iain Dale – do not seem unduly bothered by these shortcomings. Could it be that they don’t mind if the book damages the reputations of the author and the SNP administrations in which he served?

The most astonishing passages occur when Mr MacAskill offers his opinion as to who planted the bomb. Syntax purists, look away now: ‘Megrahi had been to Malta the month before, which was probably preparatory for the scheme and involved discussions on the logistics of clothes, the suitcase and the bomb equipment. He may even have brought the timers in with him.’ At this point Mr MacAskill ratchets up his use of the conditional tense – always a handy tool when indulging in pure speculation: ‘He [Megrahi] would meet with others in the [Libyan] embassy…he would not be the bomb maker. That would have been prepared in the Libyan People’s Bureau…’ Again, there is no attempt to substantiate these wild surmises.

Mr MacAskill proceeds to demolish the findings of the Camp Zeist court. Of the items bought in Tony Gauci’s shop in Malta which were packed in the bomb suitcase, he writes: ‘The clothes were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi.’ Correctly describing as ‘rather implausible’ the evidence produced by the prosecution that Megrahi was the purchaser, MacAskill continues, ‘But, if Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, he was certainly involved.’ Really? How?

Megrahi’s role, it seems, was to fly from Tripoli into Luqa Airport in Malta on 20 December 1988 ‘with the suitcase that was to transport the bomb’. ‘The suitcase,’ we are informed, ‘was a Samsonite model, sold heavily in the Middle East market’ – as if this proves anything. These statements not only disregard the fact that Megrahi and his co-accused Fhimah (the station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa) arrived in Malta on that date with no check-in luggage, they also rely solely on the testimony of a CIA-paid informer Abdul Majid Giaka, whom the judges dismissed as an utterly unreliable witness, concluding, ‘We cannot accept the evidence of Abdul Majid that he saw the two accused arriving with a suitcase. It follows that there is no evidence that either of them had any luggage, let alone a brown Samsonite suitcase.’

Mr MacAskill wades deeper into the mire. Further undermining the Camp Zeist judgement, he writes that, on the morning of 21 December, Megrahi took the suitcase (now apparently loaded with the bomb) to the airport, ‘but it was Fhimah who would get it airside and beyond security.…Placing a bag behind and into the system was a relatively simple task given the accreditation and access Fhimah had.’ At the trial the Crown argued that just such a sequence of events had occurred. The judges, however, concluded that ‘there is no evidence in our opinion which can be used to justify this proposition and therefore at best it must be in the realm of speculation. Furthermore, there is the formidable objection that there is no evidence at all to suggest that the second accused was even at Luqa airport on 21 December.’ Fhimah was consequently acquitted.

The judges also observed that ‘the absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [at Luqa] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.’ In just a few bold sentences, Mr MacAskill has completely overcome this difficulty.

Mr MacAskill finds it ‘hard to imagine how there could have been any other verdict in the circumstances.’ This is strange, as neither prosecution, defence teams, the families of the victims nor most independent observers expected one of the accused to walk free and the other to be found guilty. Mr MacAskill continues: ‘In many ways, as with Megrahi and Fhimah, Scots law and its judges were simply actors in the theatre that had been created to circumvent and solve both a diplomatic impasse and political problem. Scots law convened the trial, and yet found itself on trial.’

Read those sentences carefully: a former Justice Secretary is effectively saying that, at Camp Zeist, diplomacy and politics trumped justice. For how many years have critics of the proceedings been saying this, while Mr MacAskill, the Scottish Government and the Crown Office have maintained that justice prevailed?

Mr MacAskill’s solving of the problem of how the bomb was placed on flight KM180 relieves him of the need to address with any seriousness the accumulated mass of other evidence pointing in other directions. He pays no attention to the post-trial discrediting of the infamous timer circuit-board fragment linking Libya to the bomb, nor to Morag Kerr’s  convincing explanation, in her 2013 book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, of the much more likely scenario that the bomb was loaded directly onto Pan Am flight 103 at Heathrow. He skims lightly over the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s 2007 report which indicated at least six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction might be unsafe. Of John Ashton’s 2012 book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, the most comprehensive analysis of the entire Lockerbie saga, he writes, ‘There was little new that came out in the book or media other than a rehash of what had gone before and the same lines from all parties involved.’ Mr MacAskill, it seems, is not impressed by arguments that really are based on a forensic attention to detail.

To summarise: Mr MacAskill asserts that Fhimah, acquitted by the court, planted the bomb, and that Megrahi, found guilty by the court, did not buy the clothes from Tony Gauci’s shop. He also acknowledges that without Gauci’s identification of Megrahi as the purchaser, the case against him would have collapsed. This, then, is the new position of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice who, while in office, repeatedly articulated the Scottish Government’s view that it ‘did not doubt the safety of Megrahi’s conviction’. So, too, did the then First Minister Alex Salmond, who nevertheless endorses Mr MacAskill’s book as ‘the most credible explanation yet published of who was really responsible for the downing of Pan Am flight 103’. They cannot have it both ways: either they think the judges got it right, or they think they got it wrong.

Mr MacAskill admits that, had Megrahi’s second appeal reached court, his conviction might well have been overturned. He then makes this shameful comment: ‘But, this account of how the bombing was carried out and by whom is based on information gathered meticulously by police and prosecutors from the US, Scotland and elsewhere. It’s also founded on intelligence and sources not available for a court or that have only come to light thereafter.’

Well, that’s all right then. Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, the grounds of his conviction were shaky at best, but we know from other sources that he was involved and anyway he’s dead now, so that’s good enough for the Scottish justice system.

If Mr MacAskill does have information pertinent to this still ‘live’ case, he is duty-bound to share it with the police. Police Scotland are currently concluding a major, three-year investigation, ‘Operation Sandwood’, into nine allegations of possible criminality on the part of police officers and Crown representatives during the original investigation and trial. These allegations were made by the organisation Justice for Megrahi (of which I am a member) and six of them were first drawn directly to Mr MacAskill’s attention, in strict confidence, on 13 September 2012. They were passed from his office to the Crown Office, which immediately, before the police had even begun to investigate them, made a public statement declaring the allegations to be ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’. Some of the allegations relate to the very aspects of the case that Mr MacAskill now says the court got wrong.

For more than a quarter of a century the Lockerbie case has been a dark stain on the Scottish justice system. Kenny MacAskill rubs and rubs at that stain. Whatever his intent, the effect is not to make it vanish but to make it look far worse.

Scots opinion rallies behind justice secretary

[This is the heading on a SNP (Scottish National Party) news release. It reads in part:]

The Catholic Church yesterday joined the Church of Scotland in supporting Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.

The Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, said the decision was a sign of strength and would be supported by many Scots.

His move comes as church leaders, civic society, senior former and current politicians and many Scots around the country voiced backing for the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.

Radio listeners and newspapers readers have sprung to the defence of Kenny MacAskill after criticism of his decision.

With talk from the US of a threatened boycott on Scotland and Scottish goods as a protest against the decision to release the terminally-ill Libyan, many Scots are now voicing their belief that Mr MacAskill’s decision was morally correct.

SNP MSP Michael Matheson, deputy convener of the Scottish Parliament's External Relations Committee, said:

“Kenny MacAskill has answered his critics and demonstrated to Parliament that at all times he followed the correct procedures in reaching what is the correct decision.
“With Scotland’s churches, civic society, senior former and current politicians and many Scots around the country agreeing with this decision and the values embodied in it it is clear that support for Mr MacAskill is growing as Scots and others around the world understand the decision and the reasons for it.

“The politicisation of what is a quasi-judicial decision has been deeply disappointing and I welcome the comments and interventions by Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm and Lib Dem MSP John Farquhar Munro. (...)

Archbishop Mario Conti:“I personally, and many others in the Catholic community admired the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on grounds of compassion which is, after all, one of the principles inscribed on the mace of the Scottish Parliament by which Scotland’s Government should operate. The showing of mercy in any situation is not a sign of weakness. Indeed in this situation, with the pressures and circumstances of the case, it seemed to me a sign of manifest strength. Despite contrary voices I believe it is a decision which will be a source of pride for many Scots and one which will be respected in the international community. I have been impressed by the expressions of understanding and insight from Dr Jim Swire and other relatives who lost loved ones on the Pan Am flight who have acknowledged both the rightness of the gesture of compassion and the doubts as to the saftey of the original conviction."

Rev Ian Galloway, convener of the Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland:"This decision has sent a message to the world about what it is to be Scottish. We are defined as a nation by how we treat those who have chosen to hurt us. Do we choose mercy even when they did not chose mercy? I understand the deep anger and grief that still grips the souls of the victims' families and I respect their views, but to them, I would say justice is not lost in acting in mercy. Instead our deepest humanity is expressed for the better. To choose mercy is the tough choice and today our nation met that challenge."

Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm:“Can I regret the politicisation of what is a quasi-judicial decision, and for my part commend the Justice Secretary for a courageous decision, which is entirely consistent with both the principles of Scots Law and Christian morality, as evidenced by the widespread support of Churches across Scotland. “Does he share my revulsion, however, by what happened when Al-Megrahi returned to Libya, but does he accept that there is nothing that anyone in this Parliament could have done to stop that? And does he also agree that it [Libya reaction] is entirely irrelevant to the rights and wrongs of the original decision?”

Lib-Dem MSP John Farquhar Munro: “I’m sure there are plenty of MSPs with the same thoughts as I have. I’m of the opinion that Mr MacAskill had no other choice but the one he made. It was obvious from the doctors that Megrahi is suffering with cancer and that Megrahi’s health was going down every day and with that the correct thing happened and that MacAskill let Megrahi go with the information he had. I believe that MacAskill did the thing that was right and the ting that people will be looking on for years to come and that every time they raise the question of how well MacAskill did because of the rules and laws of Scotland. The right thing happened and MacAskill made the right and correct decision. With that it doesn’t give me any troubles whatsoever that there are some who are complaining.”

Prime Minister’s spokesman when asked whether the release gave succour to terrorists, said: "I don't think it does. This was a decision taken by the Scottish Justice Secretary in accordance with the laws of Scotland. I don't see that anyone can argue that this gives succour."

MacAskill has reason to be angry at Megrahi criticism

[This is the headline over a leader in today’s edition of The Scotsman. It reads as follows:]

Former justice secretary’s condemnation of US and UK authorities over his decision to free Lockerbie bomber is unsurprising

Few actions by the Scottish government raised more international controversy and dispute than the decision by former justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Not only did the affair give rise to all manner of conspiracy theories as to who was – and was not – involved in the bombing, but it also brought widespread criticism of the Scottish government over his release. Megrahi lived another three years, giving rise to deep anger among the families of the Lockerbie victims and criticism from the US government.

Yesterday, seven years after authorising his release, the former justice secretary rounded furiously on his critics, accusing key players in the affair of hypocrisy. He said Scotland was “set up to take the rap” for the global fall-out of the Lockerbie bombing because the country lacked the “might and power” of the international elites it was up against.

The downing of PanAm flight 103 over the town killed 270 and was the UK’s worst terrorist incident. Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, was convicted in 2001 by a special Scottish Court in the Netherlands. In July 2009, his legal team asked for him to be released from prison on compassionate grounds after he developed prostate cancer.

Mr MacAskill ordered his release under a 1993 Scottish statute enabling the release of any prisoner deemed by competent medical authority to have three months or less to live.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday, Mr MacAskill said he was “contemptuous” of the US and UK authorities, condemning the “hypocrisy” of other key players in the affair, such as the UK Government which did oil deals with Libya in exchange for an agreement to return Megrahi. “Obama, Clinton, Straw all came out and said ‘don’t agree with it – absolutely appalling’. And they had been conniving and working for it. We actually delivered what they wanted, which was to let Megrahi go.”

While there is nothing new in MacAskill’s charge, the force of his condemnation speaks to the intensity of feeling over the affair within St Andrews House and the degree to which the Scottish government felt it had been treated as a convenient scapegoat for international ire. Subsequent comment has also singled out former Prime Minister Tony Blair over his dealings with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in particular the terms of a £450 million deal giving BP access to Libyan oil.

While Mr MacAskill re-iterated his belief that Megrahi was not the principal participant in the bombing, he also said that the forthcoming police investigation was likely to dismiss much of the allegations of criminality made by the Justice for Megrahi group which believes the late Libyan was not involved.

Whatever consolation it affords Scotland’s former Justice Secretary, the reputation of Tony Blair has been largely destroyed by his Middle East dealings. And Mr MacAskill has reason still to be angry, given that so few emerge with any credit over this affair.

[An article in today’s edition of The Times reads in part:]

Alex Salmond feared that the country’s first SNP government might be brought down by the hugely controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber, Kenny MacAskill has revealed.

The former justice secretary said he had been prepared to take full responsibility for the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi in August 2009 to make sure that the whole administration did not fall with him.

Mr MacAskill released al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds after it emerged that the Libyan, the only man convicted of the bombing, was dying of cancer.

This sparked howls of condemnation, particularly from many of the relatives of the American victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, and from opposition politicians.

The principle of collective responsibility normally covers all major government decisions, meaning that ministers share the kudos when things go well and share the blame when they go wrong.

Mr MacAskill told an audience at the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday that the convention had effectively been shelved to protect the first SNP administration.

He revealed how worried Mr Salmond had been that the al-Megrahi controversy had the potential to bring down the then minority SNP government, which had only been in place for two and a half years.

“My cabinet colleagues left it entirely with me. I kept the first minister appraised but we decided as soon as we knew Megrahi was ill, at an early juncture of the first Nationalist administration, that there should be one person who should take responsibility for it,” Mr MacAskill said.

“We could lose a cabinet secretary, but we weren’t going to lose our first government and that’s how it remained and I was grateful of the support of my colleagues.”

A Scottish government source said afterwards that it was true that Mr MacAskill had been kept in virtual isolation at this time, simply to protect his ministerial colleagues.

“He was effectively ringfenced, he was sealed off,” the source said.

Mr MacAskill said he believed that Scotland had been a pawn in an international game involving highly lucrative commercial deals, government relations and behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiations. “We took the rap for Lockerbie but there were huge international deals going on that were commercial and were security and we were just flotsam and jetsam, the same as the bags that fell on the poor town of Lockerbie,” he said.

The former minister , who has written a book on the crisis , The Lockerbie Bombing: the Search for Justice, said he was convinced that al-Megrahi had played a part in the deaths of the 270 victims.

He believed, however, that his role had been minor, comparing it to the role of a getaway driver in a bank robbery. “He was a bit-part player . . . I do not think al-Megrahi had the technical skills to plant a bomb.”

He believed the Iranians had offered a bounty for the destruction of an American airliner, in retribution for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by the American warship USS Vincennes in 1988.

A Palestinian terror cell had taken up the offer but after it ran into problems the Libyans stepped in to help and al-Megrahi helped get the bomb on to the fatal flight, he believed.

“It was state-sponsored terrorism,” Mr MacAskill said, adding: “It was a coalition of the willing.”

The real truth about the Lockerbie tragedy might never be known, putting it on the same level as other great historical events which had aroused conspiracy theories over the years, he suggested.

[The report of the Book Festival event in The Telegraph reads in part:]

Although the Scottish Government had the final say over whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was released, Kenny MacAskill likened its involvement to "flotsam and jetsam, the same as the bags that fell upon the poor town of Lockerbie and the people there".

The former Scottish Justice Minister claimed President Obama and Hillary Clinton, his then Secretary of State, had been secretly “conniving” to have the bomber released despite their public condemnations of his decision.

He made the outspoken comments at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, as he discussed his book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search For Justice. (...)

Mr MacAskill refused an application from the bomber to release him under a prisoner transfer agreement signed between the UK and Libya, and which has since been linked to a multi-million pound oil deal with BP.

However, he set Britain’s worst mass murderer free in August 2009 on compassionate grounds, on the basis he had prostate cancer and a maximum of three months to live. (...)

But Mr Macaskill accused British and American politicians of hypocisy for criticising his decision while working to secure deals with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to further commercial interests.

He said: "We got nothing out of it. The Scottish Government and indeed Scotland got a black spot, not simply the bomb that landed and devastated the town of Lockerbie.

"We had no control and little influence, we knew things were happening, but you have got to remember it suited people to be able to put the blame on somebody and say it was Scotland.

"Because Obama, Clinton and Straw, all of them came out with it and said we don't agree with it, and they had been conniving and working for it.” Mr MacAskill added: "We took the rap for Lockerbie but there were huge international deals going on that were commercial and were security.”

What is source of information on which Kenny MacAskill's opinions based?

[The following are two letters submitted a few days ago to The Scotsman but not, as far as I can see, selected for publication:]

As the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie Pam Am disaster approaches it appears as if a light is finally going to be shone into the murkiness surrounding the UK’s worst ever terrorist outrage.

Police Scotland is finalising its four-year investigation into Justice for Megrahi’s (JfM’s) nine criminal allegations against some of those involved in the investigation and trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, and is preparing its report for Crown Office.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has decided that it is in the interests of justice to conduct a full review of Mr Megrahi's conviction in order to decide if the case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal.

The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament continues its consideration of JfM’s petition for a public enquiry and is monitoring the police, Crown Office and SCCRC initiatives.

At such a critical time therefore it is surprising that Kenny MacAskill (Scotsman 10 May - Kenny MacAskill: Lockerbie bomber’s conviction may well collapse) should yet again see it appropriate to speculate publicly about the likely outcome of these enquiries and Mr Megrahi’s guilt.

It must be remembered that Mr MacAskill, as Cabinet Secretary for Justice, made the controversial 2009 decision to release Mr Megrahi on compassionate grounds and in 2013  turned down JfM’s request for a public enquiry, underlining that the Scottish Government 'did not doubt the safety of the conviction'. Yet, since leaving office, he has repeatedly, in writing and in interviews, questioned and dismissed key pieces of the evidence on which Mr Megrahi was convicted. If, as Mr MacAskill avers, that evidence is in doubt, then as he himself acknowledges the case against Mr Megrahi falls.

Both in reaching his decision to release Mr Megrahi and in making the statements that he has since leaving office Mr MacAskill must have received substantial confidential information from the police, Crown Office and other sources which he now chooses to release into the public arena before the various investigations are complete and apparently without regard to the effect this might have.

Has Mr MacAskill reported his concerns to Police Scotland and/or Crown Office? Where did he obtain the information on which he is basing his speculation and opinions? Was this confidential information received while acting as Cabinet Secretary for Justice and should it have  been used for public speculation and profit?

It is in the interests of justice that these questions are asked and that Mr MacAskill passes any relevant evidence to the authorities as a matter of urgency.

Iain A J McKie 

Secretary of Justice for Megrahi

I am sorry to see that Kenny MacAskill's article contains a number of easily refutable errors, but I value his continued contributions.

One of the more obvious errors is that there is, so far as we know, no proof that Gaddafi ever admitted responsibility for Lockerbie. 

That means that when, as I believe will eventually happen, the Megrahi verdict is seen as untenable, it is likely that many will continue to believe that 'it must have been Libya's work through Malta somehow'.

When I last met members of the Tripoli based Government after the murder of Gaddafi, senior members were seized with a determination to blame Lockerbie onto their fallen leader, perhaps in the hope of reducing blame on others. It seemed to be a belief without any 'proof', except for their own enthusiasm for it.

Among all the conspiracy theories of thirty years, my friend has always been William of Occam [1287-1347] who seems to have believed quaintly that the simplest explanation compatible with the actual facts was the most likely to be true. Here are some facts about Lockerbie, suggesting a relatively simple explanation:-

1. Iran had an airbus containing 290 innocent victims destroyed by a US missile 5 months before Lockerbie, and received no timeous apology whatever for that dreadful error. Indeed the man responsible for firing the missile, Captain Will Rogers of the USS Vincennes, received a medal.

2. Iran publicly swore revenge.

3.Iran was linked to the Damascus based terror group known as the PFLP-GC and their bomb maker, the Jordanian, Marwan Khreesat. The CIA knew this and also were aware of a payment by Iran into a numbered PFLP-GC bank account discovered in the possession of an arrested member of that group. 

4. A letter from the King of Jordan to John Major claiming that Lockerbie was not the work of the Libyans was in possession of the Zeist prosecution, but when later requested for defence purposes was hastily given a PII certificate by the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, at the request of Scotland's Advocate General.

5. Kreesat had developed anti-aircraft bombs based on an air pressure sensitive switch and crude timer. His bombs were not adjustable, were stable at ground level, but constructed to explode automatically within 30 - 45 minutes of take off if placed in an aircraft.

6. A detailed analysis of these devices by the West German police had been sent to UK and US authorities well before Lockerbie, confirming that not all the examples of these devices were thought to have been recovered from the terrorists.

7. Steps taken to block insertion of such devices at Heathrow were wildly inappropriate.

8. In the light of Morag Kerr's book Adequately explained by stupidity? there is powerful reasoned argument for re-assessment of the happenings at Heathrow that evening, and in particular uncertainty over the origins of two suitcases loaded there aboard the fatal flight, and placed close to the origin of the explosion. 

9. The fatal flight exploded in the very middle of the designed fixed flight time for Khreesat's devices.

These are but a few simple facts from among many others. It is to be hoped that the question of ingestion of the bomb at Heathrow, not just Malta or Frankfurt as well as the bomb's most probable origins, will soon accompany new steps by the Scottish authorities to review this dreadful case in detail, on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi's family. 

Dr Jim Swire