Group wants Lockerbie case review

[This is the headline over a report on the Big On Glasgow website. It describes the letter to editors recently sent out by the Justice for Megrahi campaign and concludes with the following quotation from Dr Jim Swire:]

“Let’s stop pretending that what matters is the process running up to the release. What matters is what he is guilty of.

“As I see it, international politicians handed the job of investigation and trial to Scotland. Scotland’s most responsible body decided there may have been a miscarriage of justice. That’s what Megrahi’s appeal was starting to do.

“I don’t know why he dropped the appeal. But Scotland is leaning on the edge of a precipice. Following Megrahi’s return home, there is no vehicle being used to re-examine responsibly the evidence that lead to the conviction. I’m talking here as a relative. What we want is the truth: who murdered our families?”

[A report on the website of the Morning Star reads in part:]

A group seeking the "truth" over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber revealed on Sunday its plans to use Friday's one-year anniversary of his release to demand a fresh review of the evidence.

Campaigners who believe Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was unfairly convicted argued that the issues surrounding his release on compassionate grounds - he is suffering from terminal cancer - were a red herring.

Mr Megrahi is suffering from terminal cancer.

Campaign group Justice for Megrahi is leading calls for a public inquiry into the entire affair and has now written an open letter to scores of influential people, including US senators, British politicians and those in the media and legal system, to argue the case. (...)

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has referred the case to the Court of Appeal.

But Mr Megrahi effectively closed that avenue by dropping his appeal against conviction shortly before he was released by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill on compassionate grounds.

Justice for Megrahi now wants an inquiry into the downing of Pan Am flight 103 which killed 270 people in 1988, the police investigation, the trial at Kamp van Zeist, the conviction and the dropping of the appeal.