Awkward questions over Lockerbie won't go away

There will be strenuous denials that any kind of deal has been done with the so-called Lockerbie bomber Abdul al-Megrahi whereby he agrees to drop his appeal against conviction in return for being allowed to return to Libya.

All the same, it will come as a great relief in government circles that the appeal case is unlikely to proceed – not just because of the awkward facts that might emerge but because of the enormous damage that would be done to the system if it was shown that Megrahi had been wrongly convicted.

The Justice Minister Jack Straw is old enough to know that we have a long and shameful tradition, where terrorism is concerned, of imprisoning the wrong people. And the notorious Irish cases in the 1970s and 80s wreaked havoc with the reputation of the police, the intelligence services and the judges.

The offence of which Megrahi was – almost certainly wrongly – convicted after a trial lasting six months before three distinguished Scottish judges was far more serious than anything the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six were accused of doing. Resulting in the deaths of 280 innocent people, it was far and away the most serious act of terrorism in our history. So, what if Megrahi's appeal succeeded and it was shown that yet again the security forces and the judges had got it wrong – and this at a time when the Government is trying to introduce more and more draconian measures to deal with the supposed threat of terrorism?

Opposition to giving the police yet more powers would inevitably be boosted and the awkward question would be raised – if not Megrahi then who did it? The official hope, now that Megrahi has applied to drop his appeal, is that we can finally draw a line under Lockerbie and move on.

[From a column by Richard Ingrams, former editor of Private Eye, in today's edition of The Independent. The same newspaper has an article by Jerome Taylor headlined "Al-Megrahi 'pressured into abandoning appeal'".

The Scottish serious daily papers, The Herald and The Scotsman, as might be expected, have extensive coverage of the issue. The Herald's articles can be read here and here (and two letters to the editor here) and The Scotsman's here and here.]