[This is the headline over a report in yesterday's edition of The Herald on the story featured in the previous day's Mail on Sunday on the spat between Jack Straw and the Scottish Government over the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement. The Herald's article reads in part:]
A war of words between Scottish ministers and the former Labour Government over the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing continued yesterday amid accusations of “selective amnesia”.
Labour ministers have claimed that prominent SNP politicians gave them assurances that Abdelbaset Al Megrahi could be released in return for concessions for Scotland.
These included to gain control over firearms legislation and to reduce the bill that the Scottish Government would have to pay to prisoners who had been forced to “slop out” while in jail.
Both Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill have denied the allegations outright.
Yesterday, Jack Straw, the former UK Justice Secretary, accused the Scottish First Minister of “selective amnesia”.
“It does seem now that he has been suffering from selective amnesia,’ Mr Straw said.
“What he’s forgotten is that when I went to him in late 2007, asking him to agree to a PTA (Prisoner Transfer Agreement) that would not exclude Megrahi, he indicated that he could be more accommodating if I could offer him two concessions – first to change the Scotland Act to make Scotland less vulnerable to paying compensation to prisoners for slopping out, and second to transfer responsibility for firearms from Westminster to Scotland.” (...)
Mr Salmond’s spokesman last night said: ‘We must agree to disagree with Mr Straw.’
He added that the documentary record held by the Scottish Government contained no evidence of any such deal, and that such a deal would have been irrelevant as Mr Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds, not under the terms of a PTA.
[Two bald men arguing over a comb. What matters is the scandal of Megrahi's conviction, not the circumstances of his release. I shall not in future regularly be posting on this blog articles and media comments about the repatriation. This is because (a) the issue bores me rigid and (b) my internet connection here in the wilds of the Roggeveld Karoo is so unstable that it is a waste of scarce connection time to squander it on this peripheral issue.]
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Kenny MacAskill: I stand by Lockerbie decision
[This is the headline over a report by Ben Borland in today's edition of the Sunday Express. It reads in part:]
Kenny MacAskill yesterday broke his recent silence over the continuing Lockerbie saga and insisted he stood by his controversial decision to free the bomber.
In an exclusive hard-hitting interview with the Sunday Express, the defiant Justice Secretary insisted he was not involved in any “murky machinations” or deals and accused Scottish Labour of “astonishing hypocrisy”.
He also categorically denied that he had been swayed by “economic, diplomatic, or any other considerations” and said he acted in an “open and honest way” at all times.
And in a move designed to end conspiracy theories surrounding the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, Mr MacAskill said he planned to press ahead with changes to the law that would allow secret papers relating to Libyan’s appeal to be made public.
The Justice Secretary’s intervention in the on-going row puts his career on the line and comes amid mounting anger at the emergence of attempted back room deals ahead of Megrahi’s release in 2009.Documents released last week sparked accusations Holyrood ministers had brokered agreements with Westminster over air gun powers and legislative change to save millions in compensation for prisoners forced to ‘slop out’.
But Mr MacAskill told the Sunday Express yesterday: “The decision on Megrahi was mine to take and mine alone – and I did so according to the due process and practice of Scots Law, without regard to economic, diplomatic, or any other considerations.
“I rejected the prisoner transfer application, and granted compassionate release. Many people agree with that decision and many disagree, and I respect the views of all the relatives, in all of the 21 countries affected by the atrocity.
“But I hope that everyone accepts I took it in an open and honest way - in stark contrast to the murky machinations of the former UK Labour Government, who we now know changed their policy in secret and did everything they could to facilitate Megrahi’s release for commercial and political reasons.
"And the astonishing hypocrisy of Labour in Scotland who attacked a decision that their own government in London supported.”
Prime Minister David Cameron last week ruled out an inquiry despite a new report showing the previous Labour government had gone out of its way to help Libya in order to secure lucrative oil and military contracts. (...)
Mr MacAskill has now promised to publish full details of the 2007 Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) ruling Megrahi may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
The father-of-five was granted leave to appeal by the courts watchdog but was struck by illness and dropped the bid shortly before his release.
Mr MacAskill, who has rarely spoken publicly about the decision that will define his career, said: “We should be proud of our justice system in Scotland. We have nothing to hide – that is why I will publish a Bill soon in the new Parliament so that we can make this further report available.
“I believe that Megrahi was guilty, but I accept that many do not. We will never all agree on these matters, but I hope we can agree that no one in Scotland should have anything to fear from having the maximum possible information about this issue in the public domain.”
Campaigners described Mr Mac-Askill’s acknowledgment that many do not believe Megrahi was behind the 1988 disaster – in which 270 people were killed – as a significant development.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, said: “Both MacAskill and Salmond have always stuck to the mantra that they absolutely believe in the guilt of Megrahi, although I don’t understand how they can be so sure when the SCCRC has said there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
“This is a very welcome modification acknowledging perhaps for the first time that doubts exist in the community. I think the SCCRC rulings might well be intensely embarrassing to the office of the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office.”
[An interesting article headed Many shades of Gray as Megrahi row hypocrisy emerges appears in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It is by regular columnist Duncan Hamilton, one of my former students and a former SNP MSP. I wish he would now turn his journalistic talents towards the scandal of the Megrahi conviction and the shameful and incomprehensible failure of the SNP government to institute an independent inquiry.]
Kenny MacAskill yesterday broke his recent silence over the continuing Lockerbie saga and insisted he stood by his controversial decision to free the bomber.
In an exclusive hard-hitting interview with the Sunday Express, the defiant Justice Secretary insisted he was not involved in any “murky machinations” or deals and accused Scottish Labour of “astonishing hypocrisy”.
He also categorically denied that he had been swayed by “economic, diplomatic, or any other considerations” and said he acted in an “open and honest way” at all times.
And in a move designed to end conspiracy theories surrounding the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, Mr MacAskill said he planned to press ahead with changes to the law that would allow secret papers relating to Libyan’s appeal to be made public.
The Justice Secretary’s intervention in the on-going row puts his career on the line and comes amid mounting anger at the emergence of attempted back room deals ahead of Megrahi’s release in 2009.Documents released last week sparked accusations Holyrood ministers had brokered agreements with Westminster over air gun powers and legislative change to save millions in compensation for prisoners forced to ‘slop out’.
But Mr MacAskill told the Sunday Express yesterday: “The decision on Megrahi was mine to take and mine alone – and I did so according to the due process and practice of Scots Law, without regard to economic, diplomatic, or any other considerations.
“I rejected the prisoner transfer application, and granted compassionate release. Many people agree with that decision and many disagree, and I respect the views of all the relatives, in all of the 21 countries affected by the atrocity.
“But I hope that everyone accepts I took it in an open and honest way - in stark contrast to the murky machinations of the former UK Labour Government, who we now know changed their policy in secret and did everything they could to facilitate Megrahi’s release for commercial and political reasons.
"And the astonishing hypocrisy of Labour in Scotland who attacked a decision that their own government in London supported.”
Prime Minister David Cameron last week ruled out an inquiry despite a new report showing the previous Labour government had gone out of its way to help Libya in order to secure lucrative oil and military contracts. (...)
Mr MacAskill has now promised to publish full details of the 2007 Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) ruling Megrahi may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
The father-of-five was granted leave to appeal by the courts watchdog but was struck by illness and dropped the bid shortly before his release.
Mr MacAskill, who has rarely spoken publicly about the decision that will define his career, said: “We should be proud of our justice system in Scotland. We have nothing to hide – that is why I will publish a Bill soon in the new Parliament so that we can make this further report available.
“I believe that Megrahi was guilty, but I accept that many do not. We will never all agree on these matters, but I hope we can agree that no one in Scotland should have anything to fear from having the maximum possible information about this issue in the public domain.”
Campaigners described Mr Mac-Askill’s acknowledgment that many do not believe Megrahi was behind the 1988 disaster – in which 270 people were killed – as a significant development.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, said: “Both MacAskill and Salmond have always stuck to the mantra that they absolutely believe in the guilt of Megrahi, although I don’t understand how they can be so sure when the SCCRC has said there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
“This is a very welcome modification acknowledging perhaps for the first time that doubts exist in the community. I think the SCCRC rulings might well be intensely embarrassing to the office of the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office.”
[An interesting article headed Many shades of Gray as Megrahi row hypocrisy emerges appears in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It is by regular columnist Duncan Hamilton, one of my former students and a former SNP MSP. I wish he would now turn his journalistic talents towards the scandal of the Megrahi conviction and the shameful and incomprehensible failure of the SNP government to institute an independent inquiry.]
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Full details of Megrahi appeal case promised
[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Herald by the paper's chief Scottish political correspondent, Robbie Dinwoodie. What is being referred to is, of course the SCCRC report on the Megrahi conviction, not Megrahi's appeal case. Details of the latter have already been published on Mr Megrahi's own website. The article reads as follows:]
Alex Salmond has personally pledged to change the law to allow publication of the details of the appeal by the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
The First Minister insisted that while believing a full public inquiry would be of limited value because of devolution restrictions, he could ensure that the full “statement of reasons” by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) in its support for an appeal could be published. He said: “We will be introducing primary legislation to enable that report to be published in full.
“It was an investigation that took several years and I believe the full statement of reasons, if not answering every question about this affair, nonetheless will shed substantial light and give information that the families and indeed the general public are entitled to have.”
But Dr Jim Swire, the father of a Lockerbie victim who has been an outspoken critic of the Megrahi conviction, had doubts about the latest concession and believed the Scottish Government was continuing to stall.
He said: “I had a nasty shock when I discovered that the Government had made it more difficult to get at the material that the SCCRC had assembled – something they changed by secondary legislation that they are now proposing to change back by primary legislation.”
The Scottish Government insists that at every stage it has moved towards fuller disclosure, ending a legal bar on SCCRC publishing information and now looking to block any external veto on release.
The exchange comes at the end of a week when Labour has accused the SNP Government of “dealing” over the Megrahi release, and Mr Salmond has denied that, pointing to “hypocrisy” in Labour’s stance north and south of the Border.
SNP backbencher Christine Grahame gave a “cautious welcome” to the First Minister’s announcement but questioned the necessity of primary legislation, a Bill which takes far longer to pass than an order. “I think this could be done by secondary legislation which could be done sooner but whatever happens I am told there will at least be fewer obstacles to full disclosure. I have been pushing to have impediments removed. There will be no closure on this until we have full disclosure of SCCRC evidence.”
Professor Robert Black, the legal expert who helped broker the Camp Zeist trial but came to believe the Megrahi conviction was unsound, has already expressed concern that even if the law is changed there could be data protection rules which continue to prevent full disclosure of SCCRC information. [RB: The view that I have consistently expressed, on this blog and in the media, is that if the Scottish Government proceeds by statutory instrument, then any relevant data protection rules are overridden (because that is what the enabling legislation, the UK Parliament's Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 194K(4), specifically provides). The position is not quite so clear if the Scottish Government proceeds by Act of the Scottish Parliament. The cynic in me wonders whether that is precisely why the Scottish Government is choosing -- quite unnecessarily -- to proceed by the cumbersome method of primary legislation rather than by the much speedier and easier route of secondary legislation. It is yet another stalling, diversionary manoeuvre.]
A Government spokesman insisted they had been as open and transparent as possible, adding: “Following the announcement last December that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been unable to secure the necessary consents to release its statement of reasons in the Megrahi case due to the constraints of the current legislation, we now intend to bring forward primary legislation to overcome the problems presented by the current consent provisions.”
Labour’s Richard Baker said: “The documents that need to be released are the medical evidence that Mr Salmond relied on before he released Megrahi some 18 months ago and the minutes of the meeting between himself and Jack Straw where the First Minister reportedly asked for a deal on the prisoner transfer agreement.”
For the Tories, John Lamont said: “Al Megrahi dropped his appeal and was convicted of Britain’s biggest mass murder. Alex Salmond is barking up the wrong tree and if he wants to treat the Lockerbie bomber as a special case then far better that he publishes all the medical advice.”
[The Herald also today publishes an editorial headed Lockerbie report must go public. It reads as follows:]
It is not known exactly who prevented publication of the report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) into the conviction of Adelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.
Neither do we know why.
The SCCRC’s statement of reasons for reaching its conclusion that his conviction may have been unsafe, cannot be published without the “unqualified consent” of all key parties – including the police, the Foreign Office and Megrahi himself. [RB: Megrahi's stance on disclosure is set out in a statement dated 30 June 2010 which can be read here.]
One or more of these parties has vetoed publication. It is yet another barrier in the way of a true understanding of the events which led up to the terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.
Now Alex Salmond has pledged to introduce new primary legislation to enable the SCCRC report to be published, should the SNP form a Government after the Holyrood elections in May.
The statement of reasons is a substantial document, although it is not clear whether Mr Salmond’s personal pledge includes the full 800-page dossier detailing Megrahi’s grounds for appeal, which formed part of the Commission’s four-year investigation into the case.
Nevertheless, Mr Salmond argues that its publication is the best way to satisfy some of the outstanding questions and “shed substantial light” on the case against Megrahi and the verdict that was reached.
He argues that a public inquiry – called for by relatives of some of the 270 people who died in the attack – would not be useful. Not least due to the international element of the case, such an inquiry would be “hugely” limited in its remit and powers, Mr Salmond argues, particularly in its ability to call witnesses and seek documents.
That may be true. [RB: It is not. An inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 has greater powers of compulsion than the SCCRC has. Still, the SCCRC managed to conduct a wide-ranging investigation -- domestic and international -- into the Megrahi conviction. The Scottish Government's claim is nothing more than a shabby pretext for inaction.] But the bereaved father Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, questions the Scottish Government’s sincerity. Scottish Government ministers previously changed the rules to make publication harder, now they want to make it easier, he says.
So, is Mr Salmond’s announcement merely political posturing? Or stalling for time? Some opponents feel the SNP are more than happy to keep the issue in the spotlight, to highlight Labour’s acute embarrassment over a clear difference between Labour ministers’ private negotiations in London and Labour MSPs’ public criticisms of the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009.
But as to posturing or electioneering, any electoral benefit from the pledge to legislate is likely to be little better than neutral.
There have also been reports that the SCCRC report could be more readily published, simply by changing the rules which allow others to veto publication. Even if Mr Salmond can pass a new law, some say the data protection act could make it very hard to publish, as the SCCRC deliberations contain considerable personal information. There are also concerns that the report may be uncomfortable for the Scottish legal establishment – but the possibility of embarrassment is no reason to block the information.
The Lockerbie bombing and the trial of the only man convicted of the outrage remain a lasting stain on the Scottish legal system and without greater openness, one which will not easily be removed – even when Megrahi dies. [RB: My emphasis.]
Practicalities aside, a way should be found to publish the SCCRC’s findings. Mr Salmond’s commitment to ensure they are brought into the open is a step forward towards transparency and openness, and as such, it should be welcomed.
[A pretty representative example of current US views on Megrahi is to be found in a column headed Lockerbie bomber having a good laugh by Roger Simon published today on the website of the Chicago Sun Times.]
Alex Salmond has personally pledged to change the law to allow publication of the details of the appeal by the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
The First Minister insisted that while believing a full public inquiry would be of limited value because of devolution restrictions, he could ensure that the full “statement of reasons” by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) in its support for an appeal could be published. He said: “We will be introducing primary legislation to enable that report to be published in full.
“It was an investigation that took several years and I believe the full statement of reasons, if not answering every question about this affair, nonetheless will shed substantial light and give information that the families and indeed the general public are entitled to have.”
But Dr Jim Swire, the father of a Lockerbie victim who has been an outspoken critic of the Megrahi conviction, had doubts about the latest concession and believed the Scottish Government was continuing to stall.
He said: “I had a nasty shock when I discovered that the Government had made it more difficult to get at the material that the SCCRC had assembled – something they changed by secondary legislation that they are now proposing to change back by primary legislation.”
The Scottish Government insists that at every stage it has moved towards fuller disclosure, ending a legal bar on SCCRC publishing information and now looking to block any external veto on release.
The exchange comes at the end of a week when Labour has accused the SNP Government of “dealing” over the Megrahi release, and Mr Salmond has denied that, pointing to “hypocrisy” in Labour’s stance north and south of the Border.
SNP backbencher Christine Grahame gave a “cautious welcome” to the First Minister’s announcement but questioned the necessity of primary legislation, a Bill which takes far longer to pass than an order. “I think this could be done by secondary legislation which could be done sooner but whatever happens I am told there will at least be fewer obstacles to full disclosure. I have been pushing to have impediments removed. There will be no closure on this until we have full disclosure of SCCRC evidence.”
Professor Robert Black, the legal expert who helped broker the Camp Zeist trial but came to believe the Megrahi conviction was unsound, has already expressed concern that even if the law is changed there could be data protection rules which continue to prevent full disclosure of SCCRC information. [RB: The view that I have consistently expressed, on this blog and in the media, is that if the Scottish Government proceeds by statutory instrument, then any relevant data protection rules are overridden (because that is what the enabling legislation, the UK Parliament's Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 194K(4), specifically provides). The position is not quite so clear if the Scottish Government proceeds by Act of the Scottish Parliament. The cynic in me wonders whether that is precisely why the Scottish Government is choosing -- quite unnecessarily -- to proceed by the cumbersome method of primary legislation rather than by the much speedier and easier route of secondary legislation. It is yet another stalling, diversionary manoeuvre.]
A Government spokesman insisted they had been as open and transparent as possible, adding: “Following the announcement last December that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been unable to secure the necessary consents to release its statement of reasons in the Megrahi case due to the constraints of the current legislation, we now intend to bring forward primary legislation to overcome the problems presented by the current consent provisions.”
Labour’s Richard Baker said: “The documents that need to be released are the medical evidence that Mr Salmond relied on before he released Megrahi some 18 months ago and the minutes of the meeting between himself and Jack Straw where the First Minister reportedly asked for a deal on the prisoner transfer agreement.”
For the Tories, John Lamont said: “Al Megrahi dropped his appeal and was convicted of Britain’s biggest mass murder. Alex Salmond is barking up the wrong tree and if he wants to treat the Lockerbie bomber as a special case then far better that he publishes all the medical advice.”
[The Herald also today publishes an editorial headed Lockerbie report must go public. It reads as follows:]
It is not known exactly who prevented publication of the report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) into the conviction of Adelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.
Neither do we know why.
The SCCRC’s statement of reasons for reaching its conclusion that his conviction may have been unsafe, cannot be published without the “unqualified consent” of all key parties – including the police, the Foreign Office and Megrahi himself. [RB: Megrahi's stance on disclosure is set out in a statement dated 30 June 2010 which can be read here.]
One or more of these parties has vetoed publication. It is yet another barrier in the way of a true understanding of the events which led up to the terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.
Now Alex Salmond has pledged to introduce new primary legislation to enable the SCCRC report to be published, should the SNP form a Government after the Holyrood elections in May.
The statement of reasons is a substantial document, although it is not clear whether Mr Salmond’s personal pledge includes the full 800-page dossier detailing Megrahi’s grounds for appeal, which formed part of the Commission’s four-year investigation into the case.
Nevertheless, Mr Salmond argues that its publication is the best way to satisfy some of the outstanding questions and “shed substantial light” on the case against Megrahi and the verdict that was reached.
He argues that a public inquiry – called for by relatives of some of the 270 people who died in the attack – would not be useful. Not least due to the international element of the case, such an inquiry would be “hugely” limited in its remit and powers, Mr Salmond argues, particularly in its ability to call witnesses and seek documents.
That may be true. [RB: It is not. An inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 has greater powers of compulsion than the SCCRC has. Still, the SCCRC managed to conduct a wide-ranging investigation -- domestic and international -- into the Megrahi conviction. The Scottish Government's claim is nothing more than a shabby pretext for inaction.] But the bereaved father Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, questions the Scottish Government’s sincerity. Scottish Government ministers previously changed the rules to make publication harder, now they want to make it easier, he says.
So, is Mr Salmond’s announcement merely political posturing? Or stalling for time? Some opponents feel the SNP are more than happy to keep the issue in the spotlight, to highlight Labour’s acute embarrassment over a clear difference between Labour ministers’ private negotiations in London and Labour MSPs’ public criticisms of the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009.
But as to posturing or electioneering, any electoral benefit from the pledge to legislate is likely to be little better than neutral.
There have also been reports that the SCCRC report could be more readily published, simply by changing the rules which allow others to veto publication. Even if Mr Salmond can pass a new law, some say the data protection act could make it very hard to publish, as the SCCRC deliberations contain considerable personal information. There are also concerns that the report may be uncomfortable for the Scottish legal establishment – but the possibility of embarrassment is no reason to block the information.
The Lockerbie bombing and the trial of the only man convicted of the outrage remain a lasting stain on the Scottish legal system and without greater openness, one which will not easily be removed – even when Megrahi dies. [RB: My emphasis.]
Practicalities aside, a way should be found to publish the SCCRC’s findings. Mr Salmond’s commitment to ensure they are brought into the open is a step forward towards transparency and openness, and as such, it should be welcomed.
[A pretty representative example of current US views on Megrahi is to be found in a column headed Lockerbie bomber having a good laugh by Roger Simon published today on the website of the Chicago Sun Times.]
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Lockerbie: some shrapnel
[This is the heading over an article published today on Ian Bell's blog. It reads as follows:]
Something stuck in my mind. It came to me just after the wave of fatigue you get from the sort of approbation you neither need nor seek. Specifically, it was this: a brief comment in the Telegraph, that blunderbuss among reactionary snipers, on August 21, 2009.
On Wednesday night, I was still thinking about Lockerbie. We had just driven back and forth in a day and night to the Humber’s edge so that my wife could sit with her dying mother. But I’m a hack. In the car, coming back across the border, I thought: Fucking Brian Wilson. Must look it up.
I’m so old, I keep cuttings. Not just any old cuttings; only the important mounds. August 21, 2009.
Wilson is a hack, too, of long-standing, who surely won’t mind if I remind the world that he was locally-minded, once, and may even have made a youthful political gesture of nationalism (with a tiny n), and later gained some expertise as a minister with an energy brief, before he grew energetic, post-ministerially, for Energy. That stuff is none of Scotland’s concern, of course.
Anyhow, in the cutting Wilson’s sub stunted a cunning paraphrase: “The SNP’s Libya stunt has shamed my nation”. With a determination born of free West Highland localism, the writer began: “The Scottish Nationalists have never been too fussy about the international company they keep”.
He then excoriated Alex Salmond for opposing the bombing of Belgrade. This sally was in tribute to the late Robin “Ethical” – unless you happened to have met him – Cook. Apparently, Cookie was Wilson’s companion on the British parliamentary – sorry, I’m straining this joke – road to socialism.
Let the quote do some work instead. Wilson wrote – on August 21, 2009, mind you: “Rarely can so many decent Scottish stomachs have turned than at the sight of the Saltire being flourished in Tripoli as a centre-piece of the repulsive celebrations to welcome home the mass murderer Megrahi, courtesy of the SNP”.
Wilson judged the entire affair to have been a matter of self-aggrandisement. He wrote that, “The vast global audience for the rantings of Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister, could have been forgiven for assuming him to be the spokesman for a sovereign state, albeit a tinpot one with curious moral values”.
Bear that phrase in mind: “curious moral values”. History being slow but oddly quick on its feet sometimes, how are those turning stomachs now?
The net’s Nationalists will give you a quick answer. Labour’s multifarious duplicities stand exposed. MacAskill has been vindicated. I’d get the usual reflexive praise just for saying so, over and over.
The rantings of Brian Wilson were of a piece with each of Labour’s stitched-to-order lies levelled against the Justice Secretary. For some people, that’s better than enough. They’d like me to say nothing else from now until – My, is that the time? – May.
But here’s a problem: Kenny MacAskill is still Justice Secretary; al-Megrahi is still “a convicted mass-murderer”; and a government of Nationalists still refuses to attempt to make public the facts that each one of them, MacAskill in the van, understands.* To paraphrase that Telegraph sub-editor, someone is shaming my nation.
Labour have had their turn. Wilson’s siblings have been exposed. But they are not in government, currently, in Scotland, where the plane fell from the sky. That would be another party.
Nationalism’s bots course through the local web demanding that the MSM tell the truth. Good luck with that. But here’s weird: MacAskill has part of the truth about Lockerbie at his fingertips. He and Alex Salmond, his First Minister, could find out a great deal more with a full public – not parliamentary, please – inquiry into the massacre. The farrago of al-Megrahi's farcical conviction is a stain on Scotland’s honour: what greater cause for truth could there be?
What’s the worst that could happen? That Salmond and MacAskill could join the likes of Wilson in defending the conviction, yet again? Surely not. Surely it would take a mainstream media plot to make that smear true?
But it is true. Someone else is shaming my nation.
* I should have said that, in this, I exempt Christine Grahame MSP from criticism. Apologies.
[RB: Wow!]
Something stuck in my mind. It came to me just after the wave of fatigue you get from the sort of approbation you neither need nor seek. Specifically, it was this: a brief comment in the Telegraph, that blunderbuss among reactionary snipers, on August 21, 2009.
On Wednesday night, I was still thinking about Lockerbie. We had just driven back and forth in a day and night to the Humber’s edge so that my wife could sit with her dying mother. But I’m a hack. In the car, coming back across the border, I thought: Fucking Brian Wilson. Must look it up.
I’m so old, I keep cuttings. Not just any old cuttings; only the important mounds. August 21, 2009.
Wilson is a hack, too, of long-standing, who surely won’t mind if I remind the world that he was locally-minded, once, and may even have made a youthful political gesture of nationalism (with a tiny n), and later gained some expertise as a minister with an energy brief, before he grew energetic, post-ministerially, for Energy. That stuff is none of Scotland’s concern, of course.
Anyhow, in the cutting Wilson’s sub stunted a cunning paraphrase: “The SNP’s Libya stunt has shamed my nation”. With a determination born of free West Highland localism, the writer began: “The Scottish Nationalists have never been too fussy about the international company they keep”.
He then excoriated Alex Salmond for opposing the bombing of Belgrade. This sally was in tribute to the late Robin “Ethical” – unless you happened to have met him – Cook. Apparently, Cookie was Wilson’s companion on the British parliamentary – sorry, I’m straining this joke – road to socialism.
Let the quote do some work instead. Wilson wrote – on August 21, 2009, mind you: “Rarely can so many decent Scottish stomachs have turned than at the sight of the Saltire being flourished in Tripoli as a centre-piece of the repulsive celebrations to welcome home the mass murderer Megrahi, courtesy of the SNP”.
Wilson judged the entire affair to have been a matter of self-aggrandisement. He wrote that, “The vast global audience for the rantings of Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister, could have been forgiven for assuming him to be the spokesman for a sovereign state, albeit a tinpot one with curious moral values”.
Bear that phrase in mind: “curious moral values”. History being slow but oddly quick on its feet sometimes, how are those turning stomachs now?
The net’s Nationalists will give you a quick answer. Labour’s multifarious duplicities stand exposed. MacAskill has been vindicated. I’d get the usual reflexive praise just for saying so, over and over.
The rantings of Brian Wilson were of a piece with each of Labour’s stitched-to-order lies levelled against the Justice Secretary. For some people, that’s better than enough. They’d like me to say nothing else from now until – My, is that the time? – May.
But here’s a problem: Kenny MacAskill is still Justice Secretary; al-Megrahi is still “a convicted mass-murderer”; and a government of Nationalists still refuses to attempt to make public the facts that each one of them, MacAskill in the van, understands.* To paraphrase that Telegraph sub-editor, someone is shaming my nation.
Labour have had their turn. Wilson’s siblings have been exposed. But they are not in government, currently, in Scotland, where the plane fell from the sky. That would be another party.
Nationalism’s bots course through the local web demanding that the MSM tell the truth. Good luck with that. But here’s weird: MacAskill has part of the truth about Lockerbie at his fingertips. He and Alex Salmond, his First Minister, could find out a great deal more with a full public – not parliamentary, please – inquiry into the massacre. The farrago of al-Megrahi's farcical conviction is a stain on Scotland’s honour: what greater cause for truth could there be?
What’s the worst that could happen? That Salmond and MacAskill could join the likes of Wilson in defending the conviction, yet again? Surely not. Surely it would take a mainstream media plot to make that smear true?
But it is true. Someone else is shaming my nation.
* I should have said that, in this, I exempt Christine Grahame MSP from criticism. Apologies.
[RB: Wow!]
The Megrahi Scandal: Part 2
[The second part of Kenneth Roy's essay in the Scottish Review on the scandal of the Megrahi conviction has now been published. Part 1 can be read here. Part 2 reads as follows:]
Revealed: the fatal flaw that will go on obscuring the truth about Lockerbie
This week's political gamesmanship on the circumstances of Megrahi's release is a distraction from the main question – whether he should have been convicted and imprisoned in the first place. Only the publication of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's massive report on the case can determine the strength of the possibility that there was a colossal miscarriage of justice. Will this report ever be made public?
The last week has seen some remarkable developments with SR at the heart of them.
After part 1 of 'The Megrahi Scandal' in this magazine last week, the Scottish government issued a statement: "We have always been as open and transparent as possible which is why, following the announcement last December that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been unable to secure the necessary consents to release its statement of reasons in the Megrahi case due to the constraints of the current legislation, we now intend to bring forward legislation to overcome the problems presented by the current consent provision.
"This will allow the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to publish a statement of reasons in cases where an appeal is abandoned, subject of course to legal restrictions applying to the commission such as data protection, the convention rights of individuals and international obligations attaching to information provided by foreign authorities."
A bit of background may be helpful. A year ago this month, on the initiative of the Scottish ministers, a new order came into force. Before then, it would have been a criminal offence for the commission to publish information provided to it in the course of an investigation. The new order removed that restriction. The justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said at the time that the order allowed the commission to disclose information it holds; according to Mr MacAskill it was up to the commission to decide what, if anything, it released.
This was an over-simplification of the position. The commission's chief executive, Gerard Sinclair, pointed out that the order only permits the disclosure of such information with the consent of those who have, directly or indirectly, provided the information.
For nine months, Mr Sinclair attempted to obtain that consent from the main parties involved – including the Crown Office, the Foreign Office, the police, Megrahi himself. 'It became obvious,' he said, 'that there was no likelihood of obtaining the unqualified consent required.'
Late last year, the commission's board decided to discontinue the discussions. But it added a potentially significant rider: 'The commission will be happy to revisit this matter if the order is varied and the requirement to obtain the consent of parties is removed.'
It is now 22 years since the Lockerbie disaster. It is now 10 years since the trial in the Netherlands produced a conviction for Megrahi that is widely believed to be suspect, if not downright unsafe.
Why did the Scottish government not act on this suggestion? Why did it, instead, decide to embark on the more cumbersome and time-consuming route of primary legislation? Professor Robert Black QC, the Lockerbie authority, told an audience in Glasgow a few weeks ago of his suspicion that the decision to legislate was simply another delaying tactic by the Scottish government. To vary the order, removing the requirement to obtain the consent of the parties, would take very little time. How long will legislation take? I asked the Scottish government. It replied that there is, as yet, no timetable.
Meanwhile, it is worth re-visiting the exact terms of the statement issued to SR. When I read it a second time, alarm bells started to ring. The qualifications seemed more than a little restrictive... "subject of course to legal restrictions applying to the commission such as data protection, the convention rights of individuals and international obligations attaching to information provided by foreign authorities."
Thoroughly perplexed by this stage, I decided to seek an opinion from the commission itself. I emailed Gerard Sinclair and asked him to confirm that he agrees with the Scottish government's view that the primary legislation, when it is eventually enacted, will enable the full statement of reasons to be published at last.
His answer to this SR inquiry was commendably frank.
He does not necessarily agree that the new law will clear the way for publication of the report. It seems I was right to be concerned about the Scottish government's list of qualifications. In Mr Sinclair's opinion, there is so much sensitive personal information in the report that the requirements of data protection law may well prevent its publication.
I then contacted Robert Black in South Africa. He told me that, if the Scottish government tries to empower the commission by an Act of the Scottish Parliament, 'it may well be' that data protection restrictions will continue to apply. In contrast, the Criminal Procedure Act of the UK parliament allows data protection considerations to be over-ridden.
Could the situation be any more bizarre than this? It is now 22 years since the Lockerbie disaster. It is now 10 years since the trial in the Netherlands produced a conviction for Megrahi that is widely believed to be suspect, if not downright unsafe. It is now three years since the unpublished report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which concluded that there were six grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. It is now almost 18 months since Megrahi dropped his second appeal and was sent home to die.
Yet it seems from all SR has been able to establish in the last week that we are no nearer to getting at the truth.
[It is my view that the Scottish Government is manufacturing difficulties where none need exist. Why? The simple answer is that the Scottish Government's legal advisers (if not the Scottish Ministers) are only too well aware of how much damage they themselves would suffer if the Lockerbie can of worms were allowed to be opened.]
Revealed: the fatal flaw that will go on obscuring the truth about Lockerbie
This week's political gamesmanship on the circumstances of Megrahi's release is a distraction from the main question – whether he should have been convicted and imprisoned in the first place. Only the publication of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's massive report on the case can determine the strength of the possibility that there was a colossal miscarriage of justice. Will this report ever be made public?
The last week has seen some remarkable developments with SR at the heart of them.
After part 1 of 'The Megrahi Scandal' in this magazine last week, the Scottish government issued a statement: "We have always been as open and transparent as possible which is why, following the announcement last December that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been unable to secure the necessary consents to release its statement of reasons in the Megrahi case due to the constraints of the current legislation, we now intend to bring forward legislation to overcome the problems presented by the current consent provision.
"This will allow the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to publish a statement of reasons in cases where an appeal is abandoned, subject of course to legal restrictions applying to the commission such as data protection, the convention rights of individuals and international obligations attaching to information provided by foreign authorities."
A bit of background may be helpful. A year ago this month, on the initiative of the Scottish ministers, a new order came into force. Before then, it would have been a criminal offence for the commission to publish information provided to it in the course of an investigation. The new order removed that restriction. The justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said at the time that the order allowed the commission to disclose information it holds; according to Mr MacAskill it was up to the commission to decide what, if anything, it released.
This was an over-simplification of the position. The commission's chief executive, Gerard Sinclair, pointed out that the order only permits the disclosure of such information with the consent of those who have, directly or indirectly, provided the information.
For nine months, Mr Sinclair attempted to obtain that consent from the main parties involved – including the Crown Office, the Foreign Office, the police, Megrahi himself. 'It became obvious,' he said, 'that there was no likelihood of obtaining the unqualified consent required.'
Late last year, the commission's board decided to discontinue the discussions. But it added a potentially significant rider: 'The commission will be happy to revisit this matter if the order is varied and the requirement to obtain the consent of parties is removed.'
It is now 22 years since the Lockerbie disaster. It is now 10 years since the trial in the Netherlands produced a conviction for Megrahi that is widely believed to be suspect, if not downright unsafe.
Why did the Scottish government not act on this suggestion? Why did it, instead, decide to embark on the more cumbersome and time-consuming route of primary legislation? Professor Robert Black QC, the Lockerbie authority, told an audience in Glasgow a few weeks ago of his suspicion that the decision to legislate was simply another delaying tactic by the Scottish government. To vary the order, removing the requirement to obtain the consent of the parties, would take very little time. How long will legislation take? I asked the Scottish government. It replied that there is, as yet, no timetable.
Meanwhile, it is worth re-visiting the exact terms of the statement issued to SR. When I read it a second time, alarm bells started to ring. The qualifications seemed more than a little restrictive... "subject of course to legal restrictions applying to the commission such as data protection, the convention rights of individuals and international obligations attaching to information provided by foreign authorities."
Thoroughly perplexed by this stage, I decided to seek an opinion from the commission itself. I emailed Gerard Sinclair and asked him to confirm that he agrees with the Scottish government's view that the primary legislation, when it is eventually enacted, will enable the full statement of reasons to be published at last.
His answer to this SR inquiry was commendably frank.
He does not necessarily agree that the new law will clear the way for publication of the report. It seems I was right to be concerned about the Scottish government's list of qualifications. In Mr Sinclair's opinion, there is so much sensitive personal information in the report that the requirements of data protection law may well prevent its publication.
I then contacted Robert Black in South Africa. He told me that, if the Scottish government tries to empower the commission by an Act of the Scottish Parliament, 'it may well be' that data protection restrictions will continue to apply. In contrast, the Criminal Procedure Act of the UK parliament allows data protection considerations to be over-ridden.
Could the situation be any more bizarre than this? It is now 22 years since the Lockerbie disaster. It is now 10 years since the trial in the Netherlands produced a conviction for Megrahi that is widely believed to be suspect, if not downright unsafe. It is now three years since the unpublished report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which concluded that there were six grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. It is now almost 18 months since Megrahi dropped his second appeal and was sent home to die.
Yet it seems from all SR has been able to establish in the last week that we are no nearer to getting at the truth.
[It is my view that the Scottish Government is manufacturing difficulties where none need exist. Why? The simple answer is that the Scottish Government's legal advisers (if not the Scottish Ministers) are only too well aware of how much damage they themselves would suffer if the Lockerbie can of worms were allowed to be opened.]
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Truth lies hidden beneath the blather about Megrahi
[This is the headline over Ian Bell's column in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Sir Gus O’Donnell’s trawl through certain documents relating to the Lockerbie bombing has become very bad news for Labour.
It is bad in London, bad in Edinburgh; bad for reputations, bad for careers. On both sides of the border, the charge is the same: saying one thing, doing another. The only difference is that some things were shouted in one place and whispered elsewhere.
David Cameron handled the report with a certain vicious elegance in the Commons, in his best more-in-sorrow-than-anger voice. Too many things, he pointed out, were left unsaid by Labour ministers. Whether he would have behaved any differently in their shoes was a point he was happy to leave moot. He had certain aims in mind, and he achieved them.
Thus: blame Labour, blame the SNP, placate America, exonerate BP, and remind us that he was always opposed to the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on any grounds. Better still, for the eternal interests of Her Majesty’s Government, nothing in O’Donnell’s document obliged Cameron to deal with a real question: what of profound doubts over the original conviction?
No-one in the Commons, as usual, had a word to say about that.
Labour was all over the place. Gordon Brown was forced into a statement that answered no questions. Jack Straw, England’s Justice Secretary in the period at issue, fell to parsing any phrase that might provide an excuse. Meanwhile, the Scottish party found itself in a truly hideous position.
Either its leading members knew about London’s efforts to “facilitate” a release deal with Libya, or they did not. If not, what does that tell us about relationships between Labour in Edinburgh and Labour in Westminster?
But if all was known, what excused the many, vehement accusations hurled at Kenny MacAskill, the SNP minister who freed Megrahi? Labour in Scotland was still at that game this week, even when it was beyond doubt that its colleagues in London had connived in Libyan efforts. Straw, O’Donnell tells us, even thought of supplying a supportive letter.
It’s possible, of course, that some Scottish Labour figures were “in the loop” and some were not. The Scotland Office, first under Des Browne, and by October 2008 in the charge of Jim Murphy, was under no illusions. The latter minister was certainly given the minutes of calls between Straw and Alex Salmond. So what about Holyrood?
But this means that some passionate opponents of Megrahi’s release were permitted – encouraged? – to go on conducting a campaign against MacAskill while the truth was otherwise kept hidden. Take your pick: scandal, shambles, or a bit of both?
None is easy to spin, but Labour has done its best. Supported by the – no doubt unprompted – right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, a tale filtered into the London media this week to the effect that MacAskill was prepared, late in 2007, to amend the Scottish Government’s opposition to Labour’s prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. The alleged price: cash to pay off human rights claims over prison slopping out, and devolved control over airgun legislation. And how tawdry would that have been?
O’Donnell certainly relates – of exchanges in November, 2007 – that “it is clear that HMG’s understanding was that a PTA without any exclusions” – meaning Megrahi, the only Libyan in a British prison – “might be acceptable to the Scottish Government if progress could be made with regards to ongoing discussions...” (on slopping out and firearms law). The Cabinet Secretary’s footnotes then refer the reader to letters between Straw and Browne in which the two allude to that “understanding”.
But O’Donnell’s very next sentence in the body of his text records that, “Kenny MacAskill restated the Scottish Government’s position that any PTA should exclude anyone convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in a letter to Jack Straw on 6 December 2007”.
So much was already in the public domain, thanks to the Scottish Government’s website. Nor did the SNP deviate from that position.
Labour’s attempt to establish otherwise this week depends entirely on a “leaked” email from John McTernan, Brown’s adviser, who gleaned his “understanding” from unnamed “officials”.
You wouldn’t base a Scottish election campaign on that, I’d have thought. But what else does Iain Gray and his Holyrood party now possess? Continued demands for the release of Megrahi’s medical records? Such material is redacted even in O’Donnell’s report, on data protection grounds. An oncologist would tell you, meanwhile, that a prognosis is not a prediction, but add that prostate cancer treatments – and hence survival rates – are improving yearly.
Even given the horrific scale of Lockerbie, an attack on compassion is tricky. It’s also beside the point. As is O’Donnell’s report, and Cameron’s lofty satisfaction, and Brown’s floundering response.
The fact that Labour has been found guilty of monumental hypocrisy is important in its own right, no doubt, but it is only one part of a larger argument. In the matter of mass murder, the question of guilt is paramount. Unless it is settled, beyond doubt, every other “row” is chatter, and distracting chatter at that. In the case of Megrahi, despite anything politicians claim, there is no certainty.
We do know, though, of $3 million paid by US authorities to Maltese brothers, Toni and Paul Gauci, for the sake of identification evidence. We know that Lord Peter Fraser, then Lord Advocate, would later describe the former brother, supposedly a star witness, as less than the full shilling and “an apple short of a picnic”.
We know, furthermore, that the forensic “experts” on both sides of the Atlantic, providers of still more “key evidence” at Camp Zeist, were later discredited thoroughly. We know Professor Hans Koechler, Kofi Annan’s UN observer, damned the trial as an outrage and an abuse.
There’s more, much more. We don’t know, though, why Megrahi still fails to provide proof of his innocence. We don’t know why no political party – the SNP included – is prepared to entertain even an inquiry into the conviction.
Those rows over the compassionate release of “the Lockerbie bomber” will do instead, at least until some successor to Sir Gus cares to examine a few more of the papers salted away in the hidden record.
Sir Gus O’Donnell’s trawl through certain documents relating to the Lockerbie bombing has become very bad news for Labour.
It is bad in London, bad in Edinburgh; bad for reputations, bad for careers. On both sides of the border, the charge is the same: saying one thing, doing another. The only difference is that some things were shouted in one place and whispered elsewhere.
David Cameron handled the report with a certain vicious elegance in the Commons, in his best more-in-sorrow-than-anger voice. Too many things, he pointed out, were left unsaid by Labour ministers. Whether he would have behaved any differently in their shoes was a point he was happy to leave moot. He had certain aims in mind, and he achieved them.
Thus: blame Labour, blame the SNP, placate America, exonerate BP, and remind us that he was always opposed to the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on any grounds. Better still, for the eternal interests of Her Majesty’s Government, nothing in O’Donnell’s document obliged Cameron to deal with a real question: what of profound doubts over the original conviction?
No-one in the Commons, as usual, had a word to say about that.
Labour was all over the place. Gordon Brown was forced into a statement that answered no questions. Jack Straw, England’s Justice Secretary in the period at issue, fell to parsing any phrase that might provide an excuse. Meanwhile, the Scottish party found itself in a truly hideous position.
Either its leading members knew about London’s efforts to “facilitate” a release deal with Libya, or they did not. If not, what does that tell us about relationships between Labour in Edinburgh and Labour in Westminster?
But if all was known, what excused the many, vehement accusations hurled at Kenny MacAskill, the SNP minister who freed Megrahi? Labour in Scotland was still at that game this week, even when it was beyond doubt that its colleagues in London had connived in Libyan efforts. Straw, O’Donnell tells us, even thought of supplying a supportive letter.
It’s possible, of course, that some Scottish Labour figures were “in the loop” and some were not. The Scotland Office, first under Des Browne, and by October 2008 in the charge of Jim Murphy, was under no illusions. The latter minister was certainly given the minutes of calls between Straw and Alex Salmond. So what about Holyrood?
But this means that some passionate opponents of Megrahi’s release were permitted – encouraged? – to go on conducting a campaign against MacAskill while the truth was otherwise kept hidden. Take your pick: scandal, shambles, or a bit of both?
None is easy to spin, but Labour has done its best. Supported by the – no doubt unprompted – right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, a tale filtered into the London media this week to the effect that MacAskill was prepared, late in 2007, to amend the Scottish Government’s opposition to Labour’s prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. The alleged price: cash to pay off human rights claims over prison slopping out, and devolved control over airgun legislation. And how tawdry would that have been?
O’Donnell certainly relates – of exchanges in November, 2007 – that “it is clear that HMG’s understanding was that a PTA without any exclusions” – meaning Megrahi, the only Libyan in a British prison – “might be acceptable to the Scottish Government if progress could be made with regards to ongoing discussions...” (on slopping out and firearms law). The Cabinet Secretary’s footnotes then refer the reader to letters between Straw and Browne in which the two allude to that “understanding”.
But O’Donnell’s very next sentence in the body of his text records that, “Kenny MacAskill restated the Scottish Government’s position that any PTA should exclude anyone convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in a letter to Jack Straw on 6 December 2007”.
So much was already in the public domain, thanks to the Scottish Government’s website. Nor did the SNP deviate from that position.
Labour’s attempt to establish otherwise this week depends entirely on a “leaked” email from John McTernan, Brown’s adviser, who gleaned his “understanding” from unnamed “officials”.
You wouldn’t base a Scottish election campaign on that, I’d have thought. But what else does Iain Gray and his Holyrood party now possess? Continued demands for the release of Megrahi’s medical records? Such material is redacted even in O’Donnell’s report, on data protection grounds. An oncologist would tell you, meanwhile, that a prognosis is not a prediction, but add that prostate cancer treatments – and hence survival rates – are improving yearly.
Even given the horrific scale of Lockerbie, an attack on compassion is tricky. It’s also beside the point. As is O’Donnell’s report, and Cameron’s lofty satisfaction, and Brown’s floundering response.
The fact that Labour has been found guilty of monumental hypocrisy is important in its own right, no doubt, but it is only one part of a larger argument. In the matter of mass murder, the question of guilt is paramount. Unless it is settled, beyond doubt, every other “row” is chatter, and distracting chatter at that. In the case of Megrahi, despite anything politicians claim, there is no certainty.
We do know, though, of $3 million paid by US authorities to Maltese brothers, Toni and Paul Gauci, for the sake of identification evidence. We know that Lord Peter Fraser, then Lord Advocate, would later describe the former brother, supposedly a star witness, as less than the full shilling and “an apple short of a picnic”.
We know, furthermore, that the forensic “experts” on both sides of the Atlantic, providers of still more “key evidence” at Camp Zeist, were later discredited thoroughly. We know Professor Hans Koechler, Kofi Annan’s UN observer, damned the trial as an outrage and an abuse.
There’s more, much more. We don’t know, though, why Megrahi still fails to provide proof of his innocence. We don’t know why no political party – the SNP included – is prepared to entertain even an inquiry into the conviction.
Those rows over the compassionate release of “the Lockerbie bomber” will do instead, at least until some successor to Sir Gus cares to examine a few more of the papers salted away in the hidden record.
Lockerbie questions
A letter in the following terms from Dr Jim Swire was published in today's edition of The Daily Telegraph:]
Those who wallow in questions of inter-party blame over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (...) ignore more important questions. Our politicians continue to play to the American gallery, which has blind faith in Megrahi’s guilt.
The only body appropriate to re-examine the security of criminal verdicts in Scotland is the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC). It worked for three years on the Lockerbie verdict and found that it might have been a miscarriage of justice.
Westminster claims that only Scotland can review the verdict, Scotland that only England has access to the relevant information, despite the findings of its own SCCRC. America concentrates on whether BP might have gained through a “dirty deal” in the desert. A recent petition in Scotland has requested an inquiry into the verdict. So far this has been refused, and now an election looms.
As the father of Flora, aged 23, who was murdered on Pan Am flight 103, I have a different agenda, and it centres on Westminster.
A Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry in 1990 told us that the tragedy was preventable and that the aircraft had been under the host state protection of Britain at all relevant times. Only the consequences involve Scotland. The fate of the aircraft was sealed when the wheels left the runway of Heathrow airport.
We want to know why the aircraft was not protected, and everything that is known about who was really responsible for the atrocity. It may have occurred 22 years ago, but we must live out the rest of our lives bereft of our family members.
Every Prime Minister including Baroness Thatcher has refused an objective inquiry. We are not likely to go away without that knowledge.
[A letter in today's edition of The Scotsman from Jack Fraser reads as follows:]
Once more another dynamic is added to the case of the Lockerbie bomber and with it comes a whole set of new arguments as to why he was released. (...)
Of course, what people and the media in particular appear to do is see the recent revelations of the previous UK government exerting pressure on the Scottish Government as only a part of the decision to release him.
However, we are still left with the elephant in the room and that is the whole complex nature of the Lockerbie case. One cannot seriously make useful conclusions with this week's "revelations" without looking at the wider conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.
This case is not only clouded in terms of the release, but in terms of the process by which he was convicted. How is it that revelations on his release are discussed but none of the more significant revelations in terms of after his trial: i.e. the new evidence or evidence not given at the trial?
We should go back to before Megrahi was released. Some see the release of the bomber as evidence of global power politics at work. This is perhaps true, but why is it that the question of global power politics in Megrahi's conviction is never debated - including the legal trial of Megrahi?
There are, therefore, two different elements that are clouded: his release, but, more importantly, his conviction, by which we came to this in the first place.
People have the right to be concerned at the release of a convicted bomber but should they not be more concerned about how a legal system can convict a man with such evidence and how a legal system can be bent in the face of global power politics?
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission stated: "The Libyan may have suffered a miscarriage of justice." An independent inquiry would be the only way to sort all these issues.
[An opinion piece in The Telegraph from Scottish Editor Alan Cochrane reads in part:]
Labour's attempts to hide what should be their acute embarrassment over what can only be described as their culpability over the release of the Lockerbie bomber by trying to drag the SNP into an elaborate conspiracy have largely failed.
Despite an energetic campaign to link Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, to a, frankly, fantastical deal involving prisoners' slopping out as well as the transfer of the mass murderer to a Libyan jail, all Labour succeeded in doing was looking even more silly than they had at the outset. And while we must take his word for it when Iain Gray, their Scottish leader, insists that if he had been First Minister he wouldn't have freed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, it does take a bit of believing.
After all, to read even a tenth of the 142 papers reviewed and released by Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, leads to the inescapable conclusion that everyone in the then Labour government from Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the Downing Street cat wanted Megrahi freed. And yet Mr Gray says he would have defied all of that and allowed the bomber to rot and die in Greenock Jail.
As I've already said, we must accept Mr Gray's word for what he'd do; all I can say is that defying Gordon Brown, then at the height of his powers and authority, is not an action I would have associated normally with any leader of the Labour Party in Scotland.
Still, leave that to one side. The real issue is how this will play on May 5 at the elections to the Scottish Parliament.
Prior to the release of the Lockerbie papers, Scottish Labour strategists were confident that they'd get a huge bonus from the fact that it was an SNP minister who had released Megrahi. They reported widespread disgust with the Nats on the doorsteps.
For their part, the SNP were cock-a-hoop with the O'Donnell report, believing that with Labour being seen to be so keen on Megrahi's release – including newspaper photographs of Gordon Brown shaking hands with Colonel Gaddafi – it would neutralise any detrimental effect that Mr MacAskill's decision had with the voters.
However, their joy may be short-lived because no matter what Labour at Westminster thought and said, it was still the Nats who freed the greatest mass murderer that this country has ever seen.
And, unfortunate though that may be for the SNP cause, it is that fact that will remain at the forefront of most voters' minds.
Those who wallow in questions of inter-party blame over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (...) ignore more important questions. Our politicians continue to play to the American gallery, which has blind faith in Megrahi’s guilt.
The only body appropriate to re-examine the security of criminal verdicts in Scotland is the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC). It worked for three years on the Lockerbie verdict and found that it might have been a miscarriage of justice.
Westminster claims that only Scotland can review the verdict, Scotland that only England has access to the relevant information, despite the findings of its own SCCRC. America concentrates on whether BP might have gained through a “dirty deal” in the desert. A recent petition in Scotland has requested an inquiry into the verdict. So far this has been refused, and now an election looms.
As the father of Flora, aged 23, who was murdered on Pan Am flight 103, I have a different agenda, and it centres on Westminster.
A Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry in 1990 told us that the tragedy was preventable and that the aircraft had been under the host state protection of Britain at all relevant times. Only the consequences involve Scotland. The fate of the aircraft was sealed when the wheels left the runway of Heathrow airport.
We want to know why the aircraft was not protected, and everything that is known about who was really responsible for the atrocity. It may have occurred 22 years ago, but we must live out the rest of our lives bereft of our family members.
Every Prime Minister including Baroness Thatcher has refused an objective inquiry. We are not likely to go away without that knowledge.
[A letter in today's edition of The Scotsman from Jack Fraser reads as follows:]
Once more another dynamic is added to the case of the Lockerbie bomber and with it comes a whole set of new arguments as to why he was released. (...)
Of course, what people and the media in particular appear to do is see the recent revelations of the previous UK government exerting pressure on the Scottish Government as only a part of the decision to release him.
However, we are still left with the elephant in the room and that is the whole complex nature of the Lockerbie case. One cannot seriously make useful conclusions with this week's "revelations" without looking at the wider conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.
This case is not only clouded in terms of the release, but in terms of the process by which he was convicted. How is it that revelations on his release are discussed but none of the more significant revelations in terms of after his trial: i.e. the new evidence or evidence not given at the trial?
We should go back to before Megrahi was released. Some see the release of the bomber as evidence of global power politics at work. This is perhaps true, but why is it that the question of global power politics in Megrahi's conviction is never debated - including the legal trial of Megrahi?
There are, therefore, two different elements that are clouded: his release, but, more importantly, his conviction, by which we came to this in the first place.
People have the right to be concerned at the release of a convicted bomber but should they not be more concerned about how a legal system can convict a man with such evidence and how a legal system can be bent in the face of global power politics?
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission stated: "The Libyan may have suffered a miscarriage of justice." An independent inquiry would be the only way to sort all these issues.
[An opinion piece in The Telegraph from Scottish Editor Alan Cochrane reads in part:]
Labour's attempts to hide what should be their acute embarrassment over what can only be described as their culpability over the release of the Lockerbie bomber by trying to drag the SNP into an elaborate conspiracy have largely failed.
Despite an energetic campaign to link Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, to a, frankly, fantastical deal involving prisoners' slopping out as well as the transfer of the mass murderer to a Libyan jail, all Labour succeeded in doing was looking even more silly than they had at the outset. And while we must take his word for it when Iain Gray, their Scottish leader, insists that if he had been First Minister he wouldn't have freed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, it does take a bit of believing.
After all, to read even a tenth of the 142 papers reviewed and released by Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, leads to the inescapable conclusion that everyone in the then Labour government from Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the Downing Street cat wanted Megrahi freed. And yet Mr Gray says he would have defied all of that and allowed the bomber to rot and die in Greenock Jail.
As I've already said, we must accept Mr Gray's word for what he'd do; all I can say is that defying Gordon Brown, then at the height of his powers and authority, is not an action I would have associated normally with any leader of the Labour Party in Scotland.
Still, leave that to one side. The real issue is how this will play on May 5 at the elections to the Scottish Parliament.
Prior to the release of the Lockerbie papers, Scottish Labour strategists were confident that they'd get a huge bonus from the fact that it was an SNP minister who had released Megrahi. They reported widespread disgust with the Nats on the doorsteps.
For their part, the SNP were cock-a-hoop with the O'Donnell report, believing that with Labour being seen to be so keen on Megrahi's release – including newspaper photographs of Gordon Brown shaking hands with Colonel Gaddafi – it would neutralise any detrimental effect that Mr MacAskill's decision had with the voters.
However, their joy may be short-lived because no matter what Labour at Westminster thought and said, it was still the Nats who freed the greatest mass murderer that this country has ever seen.
And, unfortunate though that may be for the SNP cause, it is that fact that will remain at the forefront of most voters' minds.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Can Ian Bell be cloned, please?
[The following is the text of a an article "Lockerbie: Muzzled, Toothless, Tamed" posted yesterday on Ian Bell's blog:]
A stirring piece of Westminster theatre, then. A judicious performance from David Cameron, mournfully deprecating a lack of clarity from his Labour predecessors. A fine display of righteous indignation on behalf of the dead from Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Some face-saving non-remarks – before his time, you understand – from Ed Miliband. And an intervention from Jack Straw that was feline, lawyerly, self-serving and utterly empty.
But there was a big, black, ugly dog in the shadows of the Commons chamber early yesterday afternoon, Sherlock. Once again, as so often before, that dog didn’t bark.
Britain’s politicians, some of them, are not fools. The Scots and the lawyers (often one and the same), in particular, have read all the articles, noted all the books, heard and seen the TV reports and documentaries. The ministers and former ministers among them have had access, confidentially, to more information than that.
They could each say – and such as Cameron certainly would – that the last Labour government’s efforts to “facilitate” Libyan attempts to secure the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi were wholly hypocritical, and morally indefensible. There’s no longer room for conjecture.
Oil; a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA); “bringing Gaddafi back into the fold”; Libyan threats and menaces; and a troublesome prisoner whose second appeal, likely to succeed despite every attempt to obstruct and undermine it, was looming: if the PTA wouldn’t stick, “compassion” would do instead. In the national interest.
Labour at least confessed that it did not wish to see al-Megrahi die in a British prison. The problem was two-fold: the Americans wanted exactly that, and there was no guarantee that the Nationalists in charge in Edinburgh could be relied upon to co-operate with a distrusted political rival. And did any party fancy facing the consequences if the dying man’s appeal succeeded? The tale told in all those articles and TV docs – effectively an international conspiracy to pervert the course of justice – had horrifying implications for very important people.
Hence our ugly, silent dog. Not a well-informed soul mentioned the safety of al-Megrahi’s conviction in the Commons yesterday, even for the sake of invective. Taking a pop at the SNP was routine. Keeping BP clear of the mess was all-but a patriotic duty. Sticking to the tight brief that Cameron himself had handed to Sir Gus O’Donnell was simplicity itself. And venting anger against mass murder, covered up or not, was all in a political day’s work.
I don’t say that the O’Donnell exercise has added nothing to the stock of information surrounding Lockerbie. It could certainly be construed as grounds for the SNP government to demand a couple of apologies. Equally, you could define it as another reason to ask why that same administration still refuses to question the safety of the conviction. But no one at Westminster has any intention of approaching that territory, even to dismiss the very idea as unworthy and outrageous.
[Yet another article on the subject is due to appear in The Herald tomorrow. Mr Bell's blog version can be read here. I shall blog on the published version tomorrow, if my unstable internet connection permits.
There has been lots of media coverage of Sir Gus O'Donnell's report and David Cameron's House of Commons statement. But none of it that I have been able to access merits a reference here, except the editorial in The Herald headed Megrahi questions still unanswered.]
A stirring piece of Westminster theatre, then. A judicious performance from David Cameron, mournfully deprecating a lack of clarity from his Labour predecessors. A fine display of righteous indignation on behalf of the dead from Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Some face-saving non-remarks – before his time, you understand – from Ed Miliband. And an intervention from Jack Straw that was feline, lawyerly, self-serving and utterly empty.
But there was a big, black, ugly dog in the shadows of the Commons chamber early yesterday afternoon, Sherlock. Once again, as so often before, that dog didn’t bark.
Britain’s politicians, some of them, are not fools. The Scots and the lawyers (often one and the same), in particular, have read all the articles, noted all the books, heard and seen the TV reports and documentaries. The ministers and former ministers among them have had access, confidentially, to more information than that.
They could each say – and such as Cameron certainly would – that the last Labour government’s efforts to “facilitate” Libyan attempts to secure the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi were wholly hypocritical, and morally indefensible. There’s no longer room for conjecture.
Oil; a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA); “bringing Gaddafi back into the fold”; Libyan threats and menaces; and a troublesome prisoner whose second appeal, likely to succeed despite every attempt to obstruct and undermine it, was looming: if the PTA wouldn’t stick, “compassion” would do instead. In the national interest.
Labour at least confessed that it did not wish to see al-Megrahi die in a British prison. The problem was two-fold: the Americans wanted exactly that, and there was no guarantee that the Nationalists in charge in Edinburgh could be relied upon to co-operate with a distrusted political rival. And did any party fancy facing the consequences if the dying man’s appeal succeeded? The tale told in all those articles and TV docs – effectively an international conspiracy to pervert the course of justice – had horrifying implications for very important people.
Hence our ugly, silent dog. Not a well-informed soul mentioned the safety of al-Megrahi’s conviction in the Commons yesterday, even for the sake of invective. Taking a pop at the SNP was routine. Keeping BP clear of the mess was all-but a patriotic duty. Sticking to the tight brief that Cameron himself had handed to Sir Gus O’Donnell was simplicity itself. And venting anger against mass murder, covered up or not, was all in a political day’s work.
I don’t say that the O’Donnell exercise has added nothing to the stock of information surrounding Lockerbie. It could certainly be construed as grounds for the SNP government to demand a couple of apologies. Equally, you could define it as another reason to ask why that same administration still refuses to question the safety of the conviction. But no one at Westminster has any intention of approaching that territory, even to dismiss the very idea as unworthy and outrageous.
[Yet another article on the subject is due to appear in The Herald tomorrow. Mr Bell's blog version can be read here. I shall blog on the published version tomorrow, if my unstable internet connection permits.
There has been lots of media coverage of Sir Gus O'Donnell's report and David Cameron's House of Commons statement. But none of it that I have been able to access merits a reference here, except the editorial in The Herald headed Megrahi questions still unanswered.]
Monday, 7 February 2011
UK ministers 'wanted Lockerbie bomber released'
[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The previous UK government did "all it could" to help facilitate the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, a report on the case says.
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the country's most senior civil servant, said there was an "underlying desire" to see Megrahi released before he died.
But his report concluded that it was made clear to Libya that the final decision was up to Scottish ministers.
And there was no evidence of Labour pressure on the Holyrood government.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who set up the investigation, said the release had been "profoundly wrong" but added there was no need for a fresh inquiry.
Labour's Gordon Brown, who was in Downing Street when Megrahi was freed in August 2009, said the decision had been made by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and "no-one else". (...)
The report by Sir Gus, the Cabinet Secretary, said the UK government had had an "underlying desire to see Mr Megrahi released before he died".
It added that, in 2008, the government developed a policy that it "should do all it could, whilst respecting devolved competences, to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government for Mr Megrahi's transfer under the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement) or release on compassionate grounds".
"This action amounted to: Proceeding with ratification of the PTA; explaining to Libya in factual terms the process for application for transfer under a PTA or for compassionate release, and informing the Scottish government that there was no legal barrier to transfer under the PTA," the report said.
But Sir Gus said he had "not seen any evidence" that the UK government had pressured or lobbied the Scottish government - run by the Scottish National Party - for the transfer or release of Megrahi.
He said the information showed UK ministers had changed their position on Megrahi due to commercial considerations, including lobbying by oil firm BP, in Libya.
In a statement to the UK Parliament, David Cameron dismissed claims, investigated by a recent US Congressional inquiry, that Megrahi's release may have been due to pressure by BP on UK ministers.
The prime minister told MPs he did not believe the documents justified calls for a new inquiry, adding: "The key point to me that emerges from reading the paperwork is this: Insufficient consideration was given to the most basic question of all.
"Was it really right for the British government to 'facilitate' an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government in the case of an individual who was convicted of murdering 270 people, including 43 British citizens and 190 Americans, and 19 other nationalities?
"That is, for me, the biggest lesson of this entire affair."
Mr Cameron added: "For my part, I repeat, I believe it was profoundly wrong. The fact that 18 months later the Lockerbie bomber is today living, at liberty, in Tripoli, only serves to underline that." (...)
[The Scottish Government has today also published a final set of documents relating to the release. The press release describing the documents and containing a link to the website on which they can be read in full can be accessed here.
There is more conspiracy theorising about the circumstances of Megrahi's release in this article in today's edition of the rabidly anti-SNP Daily Record.
How I wish that even a quarter of the journalistic time spent on, and space devoted to, the rights and wrongs of the Megrahi release were spent on and devoted to the rights and wrongs of the Megrahi conviction! A forlorn hope, I know.
I regret to report that my Middelpos internet connection is just as slow and unstable as I remembered. But there are compensations, like sunshine and warmth.]
The previous UK government did "all it could" to help facilitate the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, a report on the case says.
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the country's most senior civil servant, said there was an "underlying desire" to see Megrahi released before he died.
But his report concluded that it was made clear to Libya that the final decision was up to Scottish ministers.
And there was no evidence of Labour pressure on the Holyrood government.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who set up the investigation, said the release had been "profoundly wrong" but added there was no need for a fresh inquiry.
Labour's Gordon Brown, who was in Downing Street when Megrahi was freed in August 2009, said the decision had been made by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and "no-one else". (...)
The report by Sir Gus, the Cabinet Secretary, said the UK government had had an "underlying desire to see Mr Megrahi released before he died".
It added that, in 2008, the government developed a policy that it "should do all it could, whilst respecting devolved competences, to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government for Mr Megrahi's transfer under the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement) or release on compassionate grounds".
"This action amounted to: Proceeding with ratification of the PTA; explaining to Libya in factual terms the process for application for transfer under a PTA or for compassionate release, and informing the Scottish government that there was no legal barrier to transfer under the PTA," the report said.
But Sir Gus said he had "not seen any evidence" that the UK government had pressured or lobbied the Scottish government - run by the Scottish National Party - for the transfer or release of Megrahi.
He said the information showed UK ministers had changed their position on Megrahi due to commercial considerations, including lobbying by oil firm BP, in Libya.
In a statement to the UK Parliament, David Cameron dismissed claims, investigated by a recent US Congressional inquiry, that Megrahi's release may have been due to pressure by BP on UK ministers.
The prime minister told MPs he did not believe the documents justified calls for a new inquiry, adding: "The key point to me that emerges from reading the paperwork is this: Insufficient consideration was given to the most basic question of all.
"Was it really right for the British government to 'facilitate' an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government in the case of an individual who was convicted of murdering 270 people, including 43 British citizens and 190 Americans, and 19 other nationalities?
"That is, for me, the biggest lesson of this entire affair."
Mr Cameron added: "For my part, I repeat, I believe it was profoundly wrong. The fact that 18 months later the Lockerbie bomber is today living, at liberty, in Tripoli, only serves to underline that." (...)
[The Scottish Government has today also published a final set of documents relating to the release. The press release describing the documents and containing a link to the website on which they can be read in full can be accessed here.
There is more conspiracy theorising about the circumstances of Megrahi's release in this article in today's edition of the rabidly anti-SNP Daily Record.
How I wish that even a quarter of the journalistic time spent on, and space devoted to, the rights and wrongs of the Megrahi release were spent on and devoted to the rights and wrongs of the Megrahi conviction! A forlorn hope, I know.
I regret to report that my Middelpos internet connection is just as slow and unstable as I remembered. But there are compensations, like sunshine and warmth.]
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Noordkaap, hier kom ek!
My next post on this blog (not before the evening of 7 Febnuary) will be from the tiny settlement of Middelpos in the Northern Cape, South Africa. My internet connection there is painfully slow (and cannot be upgraded) which makes trawling the internet and the blogosphere difficult. I would therefore be grateful for any references to Lockerbie-related news items that readers care to send to me. But no large attachments, please, which take an eternity to download.
Christine Grahame on the WikiLeaks Megrahi cables
The SNP's Christine Grahame MSP was interviewed on this morning's edition of BBC Radio Scotland's Newsweek Scotland programme about the WikiLeaks cables relating to the UK Labour Government's attitude in the run-up to Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation. Richard Baker MSP, the legal affairs spokesman of the Labour Party in Scotland was "not available" to take part and the party declined to provide a substitute. The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Lockerbie’s hidden witness
[I am grateful to Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph for allowing me to reproduce the following extract from their unpublished book Lockerbie: Unfinished Business.]
Not contained in Harry Bell’s diaries, but held on police files, was information concerning a David Wright, a second identification witness to the purchase of clothes in Gauci’s shop.
On 6th November 1989 the BBC Six O’Clock News showed footage which mentioned for the first time that a suitcase containing the bomb was introduced in Malta. Images of Gauci’s shop Mary’s House were displayed. The commentary mentioned fragments of clothes found at the crash site, and that they had been purchased from Mary’s House by an Arab man. Watching the programme was a regular visitor to Malta, Mr David Wright.
A week later Wright contacted Dumfries and Galloway police. One month later, on 18th December 1989 he signed a statement. He claimed that he was a frequent visitor to Malta and a friend of Tony Gauci. He would spend time in Tony’s shop. During one of his visits made between 28th October and the 28th of November 1988 he was in the shop when two men entered saying they were interested in purchasing some clothes. With Gauci offering guidance they proceeded to buy various items of clothing. They were smartly dressed, one wore a dark suit and he had swarthy skin. Both were aged over forty-five years. They spoke English, said they were Libyan, and were staying at the Holiday Inn. During the purchase, Wright recalls Gauci boasting that he could tell the size of people just by looking at them.
Wright gave descriptions of the two men, neither of which matched the accused al-Megrahi. He said that he subsequently recognised the younger of the two men from a TV programme when the man appeared as a spokesman for the Libyan government. Wright claimed that Gauci later described the two as “Libyan Pigs”. Wright told the police that when he spoke to Gauci around the time of the BBC News broadcast, Gauci appeared not to remember the event.
The SCCRC traced the police records of Wright’s contacts and interviews. His statement was initially flagged by the police for action on 18th December 1989, but changed to “filed” on 13th February 1990. Seventeen years later, on 5th December 2007 Wright was interviewed by officers of the SCCRC and signed an affidavit restating all of his previous account.
The key feature of Wright’s statement is the date of the purchase. The Crown made much of al-Megrahi’s presence in Malta on 7th December 1988. And that day was chosen by the judges as the most likely, seemingly on the premise that unproved inferences elsewhere in the Crown case indicated that al-Megrahi was the culprit. Yet if Wright’s statement is correct, the purchase must have been on a different day, possibly but not necessarily the 23rd November. Whatever day it was, al-Megrahi could not have been one of the purchasers, since his passport records showed that he was not in Malta on any of the days when Wright was present.
Wright’s statement was given to the Dumfries and Galloway police at the height of their investigations led by Harry Bell and DCI Gilchrist. “The most intense police investigation in Scottish legal history” was daily news throughout the force. It seems to me inconceivable that the police officer or officers recording Wright’s statement were unaware that it was a critical link in the chain of evidence. I have no doubt that they sought advice from senior officers.
There are, therefore, serious questions that must be put to those who recorded Wright’s statement and filed it. Who did you inform about the David Wright statement? Were they aware of its content? What instructions did they give you as to what to do with the statement? When the decision was taken to file the statement and not include it in the Lockerbie evidence file, who took that decision? Was that person Harry Bell or DCI Gilchrist? Unfortunately, without a second appeal or further inquiry into Lockerbie, these questions will never be addressed. The public and the judges will remain unaware of their significance, and yet another element of Scottish justice will remain corrupted.
Wright’s statement remained undisturbed in police archives for eighteen years. The trial and appeal judges and the defence team were unaware of its existence.* We can though be sure that if the defence had been aware of Wright’s statement they would have invited him to give evidence. And if credible he would have contradicted Gauci’s recollection of events. Stronger cross examination of Gauci would have followed which almost certainly would have changed the direction of the trial. Yet the information was never revealed by the Scottish Crown. It was a clear breach of the Lord Advocate’s duty to disclose the statement to the defence and the court, and raises serious doubts concerning the integrity of the entire investigation.**
*SCCRC disclosures and Grounds of Appeal page 143.
**Ibid pages 142 – 148.
Not contained in Harry Bell’s diaries, but held on police files, was information concerning a David Wright, a second identification witness to the purchase of clothes in Gauci’s shop.
On 6th November 1989 the BBC Six O’Clock News showed footage which mentioned for the first time that a suitcase containing the bomb was introduced in Malta. Images of Gauci’s shop Mary’s House were displayed. The commentary mentioned fragments of clothes found at the crash site, and that they had been purchased from Mary’s House by an Arab man. Watching the programme was a regular visitor to Malta, Mr David Wright.
A week later Wright contacted Dumfries and Galloway police. One month later, on 18th December 1989 he signed a statement. He claimed that he was a frequent visitor to Malta and a friend of Tony Gauci. He would spend time in Tony’s shop. During one of his visits made between 28th October and the 28th of November 1988 he was in the shop when two men entered saying they were interested in purchasing some clothes. With Gauci offering guidance they proceeded to buy various items of clothing. They were smartly dressed, one wore a dark suit and he had swarthy skin. Both were aged over forty-five years. They spoke English, said they were Libyan, and were staying at the Holiday Inn. During the purchase, Wright recalls Gauci boasting that he could tell the size of people just by looking at them.
Wright gave descriptions of the two men, neither of which matched the accused al-Megrahi. He said that he subsequently recognised the younger of the two men from a TV programme when the man appeared as a spokesman for the Libyan government. Wright claimed that Gauci later described the two as “Libyan Pigs”. Wright told the police that when he spoke to Gauci around the time of the BBC News broadcast, Gauci appeared not to remember the event.
The SCCRC traced the police records of Wright’s contacts and interviews. His statement was initially flagged by the police for action on 18th December 1989, but changed to “filed” on 13th February 1990. Seventeen years later, on 5th December 2007 Wright was interviewed by officers of the SCCRC and signed an affidavit restating all of his previous account.
The key feature of Wright’s statement is the date of the purchase. The Crown made much of al-Megrahi’s presence in Malta on 7th December 1988. And that day was chosen by the judges as the most likely, seemingly on the premise that unproved inferences elsewhere in the Crown case indicated that al-Megrahi was the culprit. Yet if Wright’s statement is correct, the purchase must have been on a different day, possibly but not necessarily the 23rd November. Whatever day it was, al-Megrahi could not have been one of the purchasers, since his passport records showed that he was not in Malta on any of the days when Wright was present.
Wright’s statement was given to the Dumfries and Galloway police at the height of their investigations led by Harry Bell and DCI Gilchrist. “The most intense police investigation in Scottish legal history” was daily news throughout the force. It seems to me inconceivable that the police officer or officers recording Wright’s statement were unaware that it was a critical link in the chain of evidence. I have no doubt that they sought advice from senior officers.
There are, therefore, serious questions that must be put to those who recorded Wright’s statement and filed it. Who did you inform about the David Wright statement? Were they aware of its content? What instructions did they give you as to what to do with the statement? When the decision was taken to file the statement and not include it in the Lockerbie evidence file, who took that decision? Was that person Harry Bell or DCI Gilchrist? Unfortunately, without a second appeal or further inquiry into Lockerbie, these questions will never be addressed. The public and the judges will remain unaware of their significance, and yet another element of Scottish justice will remain corrupted.
Wright’s statement remained undisturbed in police archives for eighteen years. The trial and appeal judges and the defence team were unaware of its existence.* We can though be sure that if the defence had been aware of Wright’s statement they would have invited him to give evidence. And if credible he would have contradicted Gauci’s recollection of events. Stronger cross examination of Gauci would have followed which almost certainly would have changed the direction of the trial. Yet the information was never revealed by the Scottish Crown. It was a clear breach of the Lord Advocate’s duty to disclose the statement to the defence and the court, and raises serious doubts concerning the integrity of the entire investigation.**
*SCCRC disclosures and Grounds of Appeal page 143.
**Ibid pages 142 – 148.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
We need independent Megrahi inquiry
[This is the heading over a letter from Bob Taylor published in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads as follows:]
The quest for the truth over the background to the Lockerbie bomber's release goes on (your report, 2 February).
But I don't think we should hold out a lot of hope that all relevant documents will be put in the public domain.
Head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, recently refused to disclose notes of discussions between Tony Blair and George W Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war on grounds of diplomatic sensitivity.
A similar impasse is likely to occur over the whole question of freeing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
The fact that intensive discussions took place at Foreign Office diplomatic level and between the Scottish and United Kingdom governments at civil service level should surprise no-one.
How else could the prisoner be flown back to Libya within an hour of justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's formal announcement that he was to be sent back to Libya?
The amount of preparation for this, in terms of security alone, must have been enormous.
But it does not negate this simple point: the geopolitical aspects were a matter for the UK government; the question of the conviction, incarceration and release were a matter for the Scottish Government.
What discussions went on between civil servants and diplomats behind the scenes will be of interest no doubt to students of government. In the end a Holyrood minister had to make a decision following advice. The case for a full inquiry into all aspects of the case remains a strong one.
It is for the United Nations or some other appropriate international body to carry it out. It would not just help dispel much of the lingering anxiety.
It would help lift the debate to a more important level than whether Megrahi should die at home or in Greenock Prison.
[Why not a Scottish inquiry? The investigation of the crime and the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi were all Scottish. It was the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that after an exhaustive domestic and international investigation concluded, on six grounds, that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. If the Scottish criminal justice system has convicted an innocent man, isn't it for the Scottish Government to take the appropriate action to rectify this? Or do we Scots really need an international nanny to rectify our domestic mistakes?
I have just become aware of a letter from Brian A D Mann in yesterday's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Forget the leaks, we still need to know if Megrahi’s conviction was safe
Once again we must be grateful to Wikileaks for revealing the duplicity of governments and politicians (“UK ‘advised Libya on release of Megrahi’”, The Herald, February 1). The latest leak of inter-government papers confirms what many of us have long suspected – the UK Labour Government was directly and actively involved in the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.
Despite claiming they had played no part in the Libyan’s release and stating that it was entirely the decision of the Scottish Parliament, it is now clear that UK Government ministers and officials were very much involved and actually advised Colonel Muammar Gaddafi how to achieve the release on compassionate grounds, exploiting the Scottish justice system’s position on this and quoting chapter and verse of the relevant (UK) Act. A Foreign Office minister wrote to his opposite number in Tripoli and Foreign Office officials met the US Ambassador to explain the situation.
Don’t tell me that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were unaware of these under-the-counter communications. Remember that the whole problem began with Mr Blair’s original rash action in signing a prisoner transfer agreement with Col Gaddafi, without realising that Megrahi’s release was not in his direct gift.
Yet Labour spokesmen constantly made public statements that their government played no part in the release. Instead they were happy to let Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish Government take all the flak and scurrilous accusations from the US and around the world. Thanks to Wikileaks we now know the UK Government was actively involved and that the US government itself was fully briefed and well aware of the Foreign Office’s contacts with Libya.
The sad thing is that all this political chicanery has again diverted attention from the real issue of whether Megrahi’s conviction was safe, and in fact if he had anything at all to do with the Lockerbie bombing. No wonder the UK and US governments have refused to reveal the relevant documents, as we now know that these will prove their knowledge and active involvement in the whole affair.
Let’s hope that the next set of leaked documents will prove that the CIA bribed the key witness with $2m, and also disclose information about the fragment of detonator mysteriously found by US agents in a Scottish field six months after the disaster. It’s time Megrahi’s second appeal was re-opened whatever the legal difficulties, or a full public enquiry was set up. Justice must be seen to be done, and that is more important than political reputations.
The quest for the truth over the background to the Lockerbie bomber's release goes on (your report, 2 February).
But I don't think we should hold out a lot of hope that all relevant documents will be put in the public domain.
Head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, recently refused to disclose notes of discussions between Tony Blair and George W Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war on grounds of diplomatic sensitivity.
A similar impasse is likely to occur over the whole question of freeing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
The fact that intensive discussions took place at Foreign Office diplomatic level and between the Scottish and United Kingdom governments at civil service level should surprise no-one.
How else could the prisoner be flown back to Libya within an hour of justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's formal announcement that he was to be sent back to Libya?
The amount of preparation for this, in terms of security alone, must have been enormous.
But it does not negate this simple point: the geopolitical aspects were a matter for the UK government; the question of the conviction, incarceration and release were a matter for the Scottish Government.
What discussions went on between civil servants and diplomats behind the scenes will be of interest no doubt to students of government. In the end a Holyrood minister had to make a decision following advice. The case for a full inquiry into all aspects of the case remains a strong one.
It is for the United Nations or some other appropriate international body to carry it out. It would not just help dispel much of the lingering anxiety.
It would help lift the debate to a more important level than whether Megrahi should die at home or in Greenock Prison.
[Why not a Scottish inquiry? The investigation of the crime and the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi were all Scottish. It was the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that after an exhaustive domestic and international investigation concluded, on six grounds, that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. If the Scottish criminal justice system has convicted an innocent man, isn't it for the Scottish Government to take the appropriate action to rectify this? Or do we Scots really need an international nanny to rectify our domestic mistakes?
I have just become aware of a letter from Brian A D Mann in yesterday's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Forget the leaks, we still need to know if Megrahi’s conviction was safe
Once again we must be grateful to Wikileaks for revealing the duplicity of governments and politicians (“UK ‘advised Libya on release of Megrahi’”, The Herald, February 1). The latest leak of inter-government papers confirms what many of us have long suspected – the UK Labour Government was directly and actively involved in the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.
Despite claiming they had played no part in the Libyan’s release and stating that it was entirely the decision of the Scottish Parliament, it is now clear that UK Government ministers and officials were very much involved and actually advised Colonel Muammar Gaddafi how to achieve the release on compassionate grounds, exploiting the Scottish justice system’s position on this and quoting chapter and verse of the relevant (UK) Act. A Foreign Office minister wrote to his opposite number in Tripoli and Foreign Office officials met the US Ambassador to explain the situation.
Don’t tell me that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were unaware of these under-the-counter communications. Remember that the whole problem began with Mr Blair’s original rash action in signing a prisoner transfer agreement with Col Gaddafi, without realising that Megrahi’s release was not in his direct gift.
Yet Labour spokesmen constantly made public statements that their government played no part in the release. Instead they were happy to let Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish Government take all the flak and scurrilous accusations from the US and around the world. Thanks to Wikileaks we now know the UK Government was actively involved and that the US government itself was fully briefed and well aware of the Foreign Office’s contacts with Libya.
The sad thing is that all this political chicanery has again diverted attention from the real issue of whether Megrahi’s conviction was safe, and in fact if he had anything at all to do with the Lockerbie bombing. No wonder the UK and US governments have refused to reveal the relevant documents, as we now know that these will prove their knowledge and active involvement in the whole affair.
Let’s hope that the next set of leaked documents will prove that the CIA bribed the key witness with $2m, and also disclose information about the fragment of detonator mysteriously found by US agents in a Scottish field six months after the disaster. It’s time Megrahi’s second appeal was re-opened whatever the legal difficulties, or a full public enquiry was set up. Justice must be seen to be done, and that is more important than political reputations.
Letters to The Daily Telegraph editor
[Immediately following the publication in The Daily Telegraph of the WikiLeaks cables about the UK Government's attitude towards Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation, letters to the newspaper's editor were written by Benedict Birnberg and by Dr Jim Swire. The Telegraph website does not reveal whether these letters were published. But they read as follows:]
Of course, as you urge, David Cameron should honour his pledge to publish all the official papers relating to Megrahi's release. But realpolitik first came into the case not with his release but with his arraignment for trial and conviction in the first place. It was a scandalous miscarriage of justice involving both the British and the US Governments, as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has suggested. What should be published are not only the official papers relating to Megrahi's release but those, UK and American, relating to the trial and conviction. Only then will the "disturbingly murky" affair, as you so aptly describe it, be exposed for all to see, not least for the families of the 270 victims who have waited 22 years for the truth to begin to emerge.
Benedict Birnberg
[Mr Birnberg's letter has been published. It can be read here.]
From the time when Tony Blair's 'deal in the desert' with Gaddafi became known it has seemed clear that it was in fact a swap: Guaranteed work in the Libyan oilfields for BP against the return of Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi in time to be the cherry on the icing of the Colonel's 40th anniversary in power in September 2009.
Reneging would have meant losing not only BP's advantage but loss of much of the rest of the hard won commercial and diplomatic advances made since the dark days of 1980s terrorism. This extensive threat confirmed in Wikileaks explains the extraordinary behaviour of Jack Straw in overriding the request of the HoC joint committee on human rights in order to get the Prisoner Transfer Agreement(PTA) with Libya up and running before the Libyan deadline.
Those with knowledge of Libya's record on human rights will see at once why that committee had legitimate interest in an agreement which allows the UK government to repatriate a Libyan prisoner even against his wishes.
What Prime Minister Blair seemed not to have taken into account (apart from the small matter of the wishes of the relatives) was that the PTA might not be applied to prisoners in Scotland, and was barred to those with ongoing legal processes.
Hurried reference to Scottish 'compassionate release' must have seemed to offer a politically defensible escape route, which did not even require Megrahi to withdraw his then current appeal.
To this sick man in an alien prison came a delegation from the Libyan Government, then the Scottish justice minister. Days later Megrahi withdrew his appeal and was repatriated. Presumably he was told by the Colonel's men to withdraw his appeal, thus hoping to open the PTA as a second route home, in addition to that of compassionate release (for which the appeal was irrelevant).
The ensuing howls from the US may have surprised UK and Scottish politicians but illustrated the remarkable political clout still wielded by the US Lockerbie relatives and their senators.
No matter how the commercial advantages of this solution for the UK/BP may be balanced against the political fallout for the Anglo/US special relationship, there is no doubt that withdrawing the appeal was a grievous blow for those who still seek the truth over Lockerbie.
Many believe that the atrocity was not caused by a bomb from Malta, nor by the hand of Megrahi, but more likely through an initially uninvestigated break-in to the relevant area of Heathrow airport the night before the disaster, the existence of which was concealed from Megrahi's trial court. The failure to identify who had broken in or why, at a time of heightened terrorist risk and specific threats against Pan Am seems prima facie to be astonishingly irresponsible. Yet there has been no objective inquiry.
Alex Salmond's Scottish government is currently still refusing any inquiry into the verdict against Megrahi. Yet they know that Scotland's Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) after three years study believed that his trial might be a miscarriage of justice. Salmond's government has produced no justification for its deviation from the SCCRC's findings. The SCCRC is a uniquely independent body, the only vehicle in Scotland designed to question criminal verdicts. David Cameron has also claimed to be confident that the verdict is correct, routinely referring to Megrahi as 'the Lockerbie bomber'.
What if that is not true: what if he is innocent? Would it not be of greater importance to review that verdict, rather than try to distribute blame among those who decided to free him?
It looks increasingly likely that those who do not accept that the verdict should remain unchallenged may have to take a legal route to gain access to their human rights: requests to every single Prime Minister by UK relatives since 1988 up to and including David Cameron for an independent inquiry have been rejected.
In the winter of 1990/91 a Scottish Lockerbie Fatal Accident Inquiry(FAI) in Dumfries found that the disaster had been preventable, and that the aircraft had been under the Host State protection of the UK at all relevant times. The FAI court was told to assume that the bomb had been flown to Heathrow from Frankfurt, the background to this belief being 'out of bounds' as it was the territory of the then active ongoing Scottish criminal investigation.
Of course the FAI court knew nothing of the Heathrow break-in any more than Megrahi's trial court did 10 years later.
We, relatives of the dead, have a right under human-rights legislation, extant in our country, to know why our loved ones were not protected by the responsible UK authorities of the day, and to know as much of the truth as can be found about who killed them. It also appears that the UK's Supreme Court acknowledges that it has a responsibility to ensure that the UK Government operates within its obligation to uphold the human rights of its subjects at all times.
Dr Jim Swire
Of course, as you urge, David Cameron should honour his pledge to publish all the official papers relating to Megrahi's release. But realpolitik first came into the case not with his release but with his arraignment for trial and conviction in the first place. It was a scandalous miscarriage of justice involving both the British and the US Governments, as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has suggested. What should be published are not only the official papers relating to Megrahi's release but those, UK and American, relating to the trial and conviction. Only then will the "disturbingly murky" affair, as you so aptly describe it, be exposed for all to see, not least for the families of the 270 victims who have waited 22 years for the truth to begin to emerge.
Benedict Birnberg
[Mr Birnberg's letter has been published. It can be read here.]
From the time when Tony Blair's 'deal in the desert' with Gaddafi became known it has seemed clear that it was in fact a swap: Guaranteed work in the Libyan oilfields for BP against the return of Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi in time to be the cherry on the icing of the Colonel's 40th anniversary in power in September 2009.
Reneging would have meant losing not only BP's advantage but loss of much of the rest of the hard won commercial and diplomatic advances made since the dark days of 1980s terrorism. This extensive threat confirmed in Wikileaks explains the extraordinary behaviour of Jack Straw in overriding the request of the HoC joint committee on human rights in order to get the Prisoner Transfer Agreement(PTA) with Libya up and running before the Libyan deadline.
Those with knowledge of Libya's record on human rights will see at once why that committee had legitimate interest in an agreement which allows the UK government to repatriate a Libyan prisoner even against his wishes.
What Prime Minister Blair seemed not to have taken into account (apart from the small matter of the wishes of the relatives) was that the PTA might not be applied to prisoners in Scotland, and was barred to those with ongoing legal processes.
Hurried reference to Scottish 'compassionate release' must have seemed to offer a politically defensible escape route, which did not even require Megrahi to withdraw his then current appeal.
To this sick man in an alien prison came a delegation from the Libyan Government, then the Scottish justice minister. Days later Megrahi withdrew his appeal and was repatriated. Presumably he was told by the Colonel's men to withdraw his appeal, thus hoping to open the PTA as a second route home, in addition to that of compassionate release (for which the appeal was irrelevant).
The ensuing howls from the US may have surprised UK and Scottish politicians but illustrated the remarkable political clout still wielded by the US Lockerbie relatives and their senators.
No matter how the commercial advantages of this solution for the UK/BP may be balanced against the political fallout for the Anglo/US special relationship, there is no doubt that withdrawing the appeal was a grievous blow for those who still seek the truth over Lockerbie.
Many believe that the atrocity was not caused by a bomb from Malta, nor by the hand of Megrahi, but more likely through an initially uninvestigated break-in to the relevant area of Heathrow airport the night before the disaster, the existence of which was concealed from Megrahi's trial court. The failure to identify who had broken in or why, at a time of heightened terrorist risk and specific threats against Pan Am seems prima facie to be astonishingly irresponsible. Yet there has been no objective inquiry.
Alex Salmond's Scottish government is currently still refusing any inquiry into the verdict against Megrahi. Yet they know that Scotland's Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) after three years study believed that his trial might be a miscarriage of justice. Salmond's government has produced no justification for its deviation from the SCCRC's findings. The SCCRC is a uniquely independent body, the only vehicle in Scotland designed to question criminal verdicts. David Cameron has also claimed to be confident that the verdict is correct, routinely referring to Megrahi as 'the Lockerbie bomber'.
What if that is not true: what if he is innocent? Would it not be of greater importance to review that verdict, rather than try to distribute blame among those who decided to free him?
It looks increasingly likely that those who do not accept that the verdict should remain unchallenged may have to take a legal route to gain access to their human rights: requests to every single Prime Minister by UK relatives since 1988 up to and including David Cameron for an independent inquiry have been rejected.
In the winter of 1990/91 a Scottish Lockerbie Fatal Accident Inquiry(FAI) in Dumfries found that the disaster had been preventable, and that the aircraft had been under the Host State protection of the UK at all relevant times. The FAI court was told to assume that the bomb had been flown to Heathrow from Frankfurt, the background to this belief being 'out of bounds' as it was the territory of the then active ongoing Scottish criminal investigation.
Of course the FAI court knew nothing of the Heathrow break-in any more than Megrahi's trial court did 10 years later.
We, relatives of the dead, have a right under human-rights legislation, extant in our country, to know why our loved ones were not protected by the responsible UK authorities of the day, and to know as much of the truth as can be found about who killed them. It also appears that the UK's Supreme Court acknowledges that it has a responsibility to ensure that the UK Government operates within its obligation to uphold the human rights of its subjects at all times.
Dr Jim Swire
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
The Megrahi Scandal: part 1
[This is the sub-heading over a leading article by Kenneth Roy in the Scottish Review. Part 2 is due to be published tomorrow. The article reads in part:]
During the public discussion between us in the Glasgow Concert Hall last week, Robert Black QC wondered aloud why the SNP, untainted by past association with the Megrahi case, had chosen not to confront this judicial scandal and attempt to correct it.
It is easy to overlook that, when Alex Salmond came to power in May 2007, not quite all his predecessors were removed from office. One unexpectedly clung on. Why the lord advocate, of all people, survived the demise of the former administration is a question for Alex Salmond and his memoirs. It feels in retrospect like one of his few serious political misjudgements: one made when his feet were only just under the table.
It is true that Elish Angiolini's re-appointment was not exactly accompanied by loud rejoicing. Mr Salmond made it clear that she had lost her place at the Scottish cabinet table. That felt like a demotion, for her or her office or both. From that moment, she became an arm's length chief law officer. But, in effect, the retention of her power base was all that mattered: this ultimate insider – lacking any significant experience of the world beyond the Crown Office – was never likely to pursue Lockerbie with the greatest zeal.
Ten years ago this week, a panel of Scottish judges, sitting in the Netherlands without a jury, convicted Megrahi of 270 murders. It says much for the quality of the judgement that, in its first sentence, it got the date of the disaster wrong. This was the first of many wrongs, few of which have ever been righted.
Since December 2010, the position of the Scottish government has become quite impossible. Here are two statements. I invited the lunchtime audience in Glasgow to reconcile them somehow. No one was bold enough even to try.
Statement 1
There are six grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. It is in the interests of justice (their words, but my italics) to refer the case to the court of appeal.
Statement 2
Megrahi was convicted by a Scottish court, and Scottish ministers do not doubt the safety of his conviction (their words, but again my italics).
Statement 1 – slightly paraphrased in the interests of brevity – was the conclusion of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, an agency of the Scottish government, in 2007. Following this remarkable finding, after a long and painstaking investigation which turned up new evidence not made available to the defence at the trial, there were two years of unexplained delays while the prisoner's second appeal was prepared. For these delays, the Crown Office was largely responsible.
In the end, the appeal was never heard: the declared wish of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was thwarted and the interests of justice, as it saw them, were never satisfied. Megrahi, long frustrated by the impediments put in his way, dropped his appeal – it is generally believed as a pre-condition of his release – and, true to form, Mrs Angiolini and her mates in the Crown Office put up their hands and declared to the world that it had nothing whatever to do with them, guv.
Statement 2 is taken verbatim from a Scottish government briefing just before Christmas. The chief law officer may have had some hand in its wording; otherwise, why have a chief law officer?
Since Statement 2 flatly contradicts Statement 1, we must look for an explanation.
Has the Scottish government in general, Mrs Angiolini in particular, simply forgotten about the conclusion of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission? It got quite a lot of attention at the time and has resurfaced periodically since, usually when people like Robert Black QC demand to know why the commission's report has never been published. (...)
It is, however, unlikely that the Scottish government has forgotten about the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's potentially damning conclusion. It is much more likely, given the uncompromising terms of Statement 2, that the Scottish ministers with or without the assistance of the lord advocate have managed to convince themselves that the most expedient way of marking 10 years of the Lockerbie scandal is simply to affirm the infallibility of Scottish justice.
Mrs Angiolini retires as lord advocate in May, perhaps to become a senator of the college of justice. Before she goes, she should tell us to which statement she subscribes. Does she subscribe to Statement 1 with its frank acknowledgement that there may have been a serious miscarriage of justice, or does she subscribe to Statement 2, which denies any such possibility?
The chief law officer cannot logically subscribe to both. Nor can the Scottish government as a whole.
[From the Scottish Review today (Thursday, 3 February):]
Part 2 of The Megrahi Scandal has been postponed until next week to allow us to check out new information
During the public discussion between us in the Glasgow Concert Hall last week, Robert Black QC wondered aloud why the SNP, untainted by past association with the Megrahi case, had chosen not to confront this judicial scandal and attempt to correct it.
It is easy to overlook that, when Alex Salmond came to power in May 2007, not quite all his predecessors were removed from office. One unexpectedly clung on. Why the lord advocate, of all people, survived the demise of the former administration is a question for Alex Salmond and his memoirs. It feels in retrospect like one of his few serious political misjudgements: one made when his feet were only just under the table.
It is true that Elish Angiolini's re-appointment was not exactly accompanied by loud rejoicing. Mr Salmond made it clear that she had lost her place at the Scottish cabinet table. That felt like a demotion, for her or her office or both. From that moment, she became an arm's length chief law officer. But, in effect, the retention of her power base was all that mattered: this ultimate insider – lacking any significant experience of the world beyond the Crown Office – was never likely to pursue Lockerbie with the greatest zeal.
Ten years ago this week, a panel of Scottish judges, sitting in the Netherlands without a jury, convicted Megrahi of 270 murders. It says much for the quality of the judgement that, in its first sentence, it got the date of the disaster wrong. This was the first of many wrongs, few of which have ever been righted.
Since December 2010, the position of the Scottish government has become quite impossible. Here are two statements. I invited the lunchtime audience in Glasgow to reconcile them somehow. No one was bold enough even to try.
Statement 1
There are six grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. It is in the interests of justice (their words, but my italics) to refer the case to the court of appeal.
Statement 2
Megrahi was convicted by a Scottish court, and Scottish ministers do not doubt the safety of his conviction (their words, but again my italics).
Statement 1 – slightly paraphrased in the interests of brevity – was the conclusion of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, an agency of the Scottish government, in 2007. Following this remarkable finding, after a long and painstaking investigation which turned up new evidence not made available to the defence at the trial, there were two years of unexplained delays while the prisoner's second appeal was prepared. For these delays, the Crown Office was largely responsible.
In the end, the appeal was never heard: the declared wish of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was thwarted and the interests of justice, as it saw them, were never satisfied. Megrahi, long frustrated by the impediments put in his way, dropped his appeal – it is generally believed as a pre-condition of his release – and, true to form, Mrs Angiolini and her mates in the Crown Office put up their hands and declared to the world that it had nothing whatever to do with them, guv.
Statement 2 is taken verbatim from a Scottish government briefing just before Christmas. The chief law officer may have had some hand in its wording; otherwise, why have a chief law officer?
Since Statement 2 flatly contradicts Statement 1, we must look for an explanation.
Has the Scottish government in general, Mrs Angiolini in particular, simply forgotten about the conclusion of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission? It got quite a lot of attention at the time and has resurfaced periodically since, usually when people like Robert Black QC demand to know why the commission's report has never been published. (...)
It is, however, unlikely that the Scottish government has forgotten about the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's potentially damning conclusion. It is much more likely, given the uncompromising terms of Statement 2, that the Scottish ministers with or without the assistance of the lord advocate have managed to convince themselves that the most expedient way of marking 10 years of the Lockerbie scandal is simply to affirm the infallibility of Scottish justice.
Mrs Angiolini retires as lord advocate in May, perhaps to become a senator of the college of justice. Before she goes, she should tell us to which statement she subscribes. Does she subscribe to Statement 1 with its frank acknowledgement that there may have been a serious miscarriage of justice, or does she subscribe to Statement 2, which denies any such possibility?
The chief law officer cannot logically subscribe to both. Nor can the Scottish government as a whole.
[From the Scottish Review today (Thursday, 3 February):]
Part 2 of The Megrahi Scandal has been postponed until next week to allow us to check out new information
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