Sunday 22 January 2017

Official Report of Justice Committee consideration of Megrahi petition

[What follows is the text of the Official Report (Hansard) of the discussion of Justice for Megrahi’s petition at the meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee on 17 January 2017:]

Justice for Megrahi (PE1370)

I propose to defer to next week discussion of the three sets of petitions that are on the agenda, apart from the petition on an independent inquiry into the Megrahi conviction, in deference to the fact that we have people in the public gallery who have sat through all of the meeting to hear about that issue.
PE1370 is discussed on page 4 of the clerk’s paper 3 and annex F provides an update from Justice for Megrahi. The committee agreed to keep the petition open pending the completion of operation Sandwood, which we understood was to be completed by the end of 2016. However, according to the clerk’s recent update, the operation is still on-going and we do not have a completion date for it.
I ask the committee to consider and agree on what, if any, action it wishes to take in relation to the petition.
The petitioners, in their letter to us, conclude by asking the committee to allow the petition to remain open until the conclusions of operation Sandwood have been announced. That is a reasonable request, to which we should accede.
I would have made the point that Stewart Stevenson just made if he had not made it, so I am grateful to him for making it.
In that case, the petition remains open.

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