[What follows is the Saturday essay in The Herald by Ian Bell, in my opinion (and that of many others) Scotland's best and most distinguished columnist.]
Unless the doctors are very wrong, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi has almost served his life sentence. That's relevant. As things stand, prostate cancer will claim him before November's end. If he has escaped justice, however you care to define it, his victory will be brief. If he is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing, as he still insists, three months spent facing death among his family will be scant consolation.
Cancer is an actor, if that's the word, in this sorry tale. It rendered any hope the truth would be uncovered during Megrahi's second appeal meaningless long before Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, began to ponder compassion. The original prosecution case, encompassing six aspects of the trial pointing to a possible miscarriage of justice (at least according to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission), was never liable to be tested. A lot flows from the fact.
Who wanted the truth, in any case? The question is not meant to be callous or perverse. Washington's preferred outcome, it seems, was for Megrahi to die, and die soon, in Greenock prison. London, with a new friend in Tripoli, wanted the convicted mass murderer out of the way. A prisoner transfer deal, hatched by Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi two years ago, was the first choice. Compassionate release will do instead. Those left bereaved in the United States are, meanwhile, unswerving, in the main, in their belief that the convicted killer of 270 people has no right to compassion. Yet many of their British counterparts, no less grief-stricken, are deeply sceptical. They continue to ask questions.
Disputed identification evidence, withheld documents, allegedly suppressed warnings, arguments over timers, the loading of the bomb and a supposedly coincidental break-in at Heathrow: these issues amount to a divide as wide as the Atlantic. For most of the Americans, the truth has been established. For most of the Britons, the truth has been placed beyond reach. Someone is wrong.
In the middle of all this stands the Scottish Government. First, it had to assert its rights over Blair's deal then watch while, this spring, Jack Straw rushed the transfer agreement through parliament to avoid damaging "relations" with Libya. More recently, Edinburgh has been subjected to a barrage - suspiciously belated - from the big guns in Washington. Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Barack Obama: the attempt to bully a minor administration with clear jurisdiction has been explicit.
Things have been busy on the home front, too. MacAskill could not allow Megrahi's request for transfer because, for some reason, the Crown failed to withdraw its appeal against the original sentence. Yet when, on Thursday, the Justice Secretary decided to release the prisoner on compassionate grounds, Labour politicians attacked him for it.
The ink was scarcely dry on the transfer legislation that was intended to achieve the same end, in other words, but London elected to echo Washington's displeasure. As a footnote, it emerged that Lord Mandelson had "bumped into" Gaddafi's son on a yacht in Corfu recently. As one does.
MacAskill consulted all relevant parties. Who else can say the same? London first claimed that Blair's deal would not involve Megrahi, the only Libyan in the Scottish penal system, then changed its mind while granting Edinburgh a veto, of sorts. Yet while the veto was allowed, and while preparations for the second appeal were in train, the transfer treaty was ratified. Libya's government duly made application.
All this, we were asked to believe, came as news to the Americans. Washington claimed to have an assurance that Megrahi would serve out his time in Scotland. London said that no such agreement existed. Compassionate release, available in theory to any prisoner, became Edinburgh's only realistic choice short of retaining the prisoner in an institution incapable of providing proper care.
Simple facts and devious motives collide. London could go some way to satisfying bereaved British relatives by ordering a public inquiry. The Scottish Government has no such power. The questions involved are substantial and serious, at least according to the criminal cases review commission, yet no inquiry is forthcoming.
Then again, such an inquiry would doubtless involve further arguments over classified documents. In that regard, as Megrahi's lawyers know only too well, the Westminster government has form. So is that to be it? The truth about the worst mass murder on British soil or some version, neither justified nor explained, of the national interest?
Official American displeasure at MacAskill's decision also has a context. Successive US administrations have seen not the slightest problem with the original verdict. Alternative explanations for the destruction of Pan Am 103, with Syria and Iran as candidates, have not been pursued. The UN observer at Megrahi's trial condemned the entire proceedings, yet the White House is aroused over one man's whereabouts in the last three months of his life?
Scotland's SNP government has just had a lesson in geopolitical realities. Playing things by the book is construed as naivety. Defiance in the name of democratic rights tends to be punished. Twenty-one years after the event, it is worth recalling the arguments that once raged even over the idea that a Scottish court should even have jurisdiction: in the matter of Lockerbie, Scotland has been a nuisance to any number of people. The idea that we are better than terrorists and should act accordingly has, it appears, caused the most offence.
Appearances don't count for much. Prostate cancer does not render Megrahi innocent, but nor would his continued imprisonment settle the case against him beyond reasonable doubt. Nothing prevents him from publishing the evidence and arguments that would have supported his appeal. Equally, there is nothing to prevent the British government scrutinising such a document in a public inquiry. What are the chances?
One man who is said to have travelled to Malta under a false passport on the day of the bombing: that's about the size of it. Nevertheless, the governments of two major powers have been disinclined to take matters further, to put minds at rest, or to settle doubts, reasonable or otherwise. And, yet, the atrocities of 9/11 aside, the worst act of terrorism the west has seen is at stake, with the devolved administration of a small country left to hold the ring. Implausible, but true.
In these parts, meanwhile, the usual editorialising suspects have been assuring us that the Scottish Government - predictable, eh? - was not up to this job. Holyrood will return on Monday for more of those self-inflicted wounds.
An "ill-advised" minister visited a dying man in prison in order to reach a judgment. In this dark wood, attention has been fixed on some very small trees while London manoeuvres and Washington moralises.
I can't prove anything in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. I can, though, adduce reasons for real concern, and enough of them to reach an opinion. The review commission took more than three painstaking years to come to a similar conclusion. The fact that the case was referred yet again to the Court of Appeal should, you might think, make anyone pause. Strangely - or not so strangely - the larger forces which dominate our world prefer not to notice. A small country with a new parliament should draw a lesson from that.
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