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US-UK relations under strain after Lockerbie bomber’s release
More senior Americans join in the criticism and ask: was it a commercial decision?
The pressure is growing on senior UK politicians to explain fully the controversial decision to release the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi (above) after serving only eight years of his life sentence for the murder of 270 people in 1988.
Megrahi was set free last week on compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal prostrate cancer. But senior American figures - including US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and FBI chief Robert Mueller - have complained bitterly about the decision on behalf of the families of those 189 Americans who died.
Members of the Scottish Parliament have been recalled from their summer holidays for a special session today when justice minister Kenny MacAskill will attempt to defend his decision to release Megrahi.
The three UK politicians feeling the heat are:
♦ KENNY MACASKILL, SCOTTISH JUSTICE MINISTER
MacAskill is due to address Parliament in Edinburgh at 2.30pm today. He is expected to stick by his argument that while he understands the feelings of relatives, he was bound to follow due process and that he took the right decision in the light of the Scottish justice system.
But opposition MSPs and several senior American fugures believe he colluded with Gordon Brown's government in London and took a political decision to release Megrahi.
Admiral Mike Mullen, America's most senior military officer, told CNN that the release of Megrahi was "obviously a political decision. I was appalled by the decision."
John Bolton, the Bush-era US ambassador to the UN, said: "As someone whose grandparents were Scottish, I'm appalled by the decision of the Scottish government. But I'm more appalled by the decision of the British government apparently to see commercial advantage for the UK in having this mass murderer go free. We wait to hear from Prime Minister Brown what he thinks."
♦ GORDON BROWN, PRIME MINISTER
Brown, who had begun his summer holiday in Scotland when Megrahi was released, has refused to speak publicly about the Scottish decision to release the bomber. As a result, he has been accused of a "complete failure of leadership" by the Tory opposition.
The pressure on Brown to make a statement has increased with the disclosure that he had more detailed discussions with Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi about the issue than previously thought, and that the Foreign Office seemingly endorsed the Scots' decision earlier this month.
The discussions with Gaddafi became apparent with the release of a letter sent by Downing Street to the Libyan leader, urging that Megrahi's release be kept low-key because a "high-profile" ceremony would distress victims' families.
The letter included a sentence referring to a meeting between Brown and Gaddafi in Rome: "When we met I stressed that, should the Scottish executive decide that Megrahi can return to Libya, this should be a purely private family occasion," the letter said. At the time it was claimed that Brown had merely said that the matter was one for the Scots.
As for the Foreign Office intervention, a letter was sent to MacAskill by Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis saying that Britain saw no legal impediment to acceding to a Libyan request to return Megrahi under the terms of an Anglo-Libyan prisoner transfer agreement.
"I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan action in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement," Lewis wrote.A source close to MacAskill told the Daily Mail: "That clearly means 'I hope on this basis you will feel able to approve the Libyan application'. That's the only conclusion you can take from it."
♦ LORD MANDELSON, BUSINESS SECRETARY
Mandelson has denied there was any political or commercial deal to free Megrahi. But according to a transcript of comments made by Saif Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, when he was escorting Megrahi back to Tripoli on Thursday on his private jet, Megrahi's release was "on the table in all commercial, oil and gas agreements" and other dealings with Britain.
Mandelson is reported to have met Saif Gaddafi twice in the past four months and admitted that he had a "fleeting" discussion with him about Megrahi while at the Rothschild family estate in Corfu.
Among British firms that could benefit from improved relations with Tripoli are BP and Shell and high street chains including Marks & Spencer, Monsoon and Next. ·
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Comments
Paula Varley wrote: "The sheer hypocrisy of senior officials in the USA is breathtaking."
Exactly! They lie without hesitation or compunction as necessary to serve the political purpose of the moment, and this is true of leaders in both major parties no matter which happens to be in power. Hence they have little credibility except among those who are not much interested in truth anyway.
Was the Lockerbie release bad diplomacy, or good business?
Depends on who
I like your comments but he is gone. Gone, Gone. It is called snake gone and leaves the trail in the dunes. Can you take care of yesterday? No? Let him be. Next time we will have the trial in Libya. Will that satisfy the UK, USA, Pakistan, and India? He went alive did he not. Tush Tush Tush Your language man
To the Libyan families, they do not give a demon. To the UK, there is a split, To USA it is a futile swim in the sand and more expenses in the swimming boat
To us the best time pass blogging and laughing at all.
All winners in the end.
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
The sheer hypocrisy of senior officials in the USA is breathtaking.
It's a shame that his conviction won't be re-examined. There is clearly considerable doubt regarding his guilt.
In any event, justice should be tempered by mercy. Dying prisoners serving life sentences are regularly returned to their families under our justice system in the UK. Human rights are universal. False arguments which compare the lack of compassion of a bomber to his victims to that of the judicial decisions of a nation state seek to reduce all to the lowest criminal level of the bomber. That is not justice.
Since the US illegally invaded and seized Iraq, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people, then failed to put their own house in order, by holding those in power accountable, they have no moral authority in this, or any other matter. Their bluster is for domestic consumption, and constitutes rank hypocrisy.. The US pursues its economic interests ruthlessly, oblivious to the wanton destruction and suffering caused. Th US notion of justice appears predicated on the aphorism "Might is right"
My dear Americans do not be fooled by our double dealing government here in Britain. The British Constitution is very flexible because it is not written. We can make the rules up as we go along. Parliament in Westminster has Supremacy and in the British Cabinet we have the Secretary of State for Scotland who is the Rt. Hon Jim Murphy MP. This line about it is only a matter for the Scottish Government is a load of rubbish. What is Jim Murphy getting paid for and why is he in the Cabinet?
At the original trail Information was not introduced to the defence. A bomb could have been put on the plane at Heathrow London. If the case would have been taken to appeal the Guilty judgement could have probably been judged to have been unsafe.
But we have been fed with the information the convicted bomber Abdulbaset al-Megrahi would be dead by the time the appeal is judged so he has to be freed for companionate reasons.
Even with the benefit of hindsight our weak Prime Minister has not got the ability to draw up a contractual agreement with the Libyan Government to protect our position.
No 1. He should have only been freed on Licence.
No 2. The Libyan Government should have been made to agree to conditions contractually with Penalties Internationally Enforceable for non compliance.
The Libyans should have agreed to no hero's home coming and the Libyans should have been obliged to have made it known to their people that he was released only on companionate grounds as he would be dead before the outcome of a Judicial Appeal.
Instead Gadafi has played the British Government and made us look like we are greedy consumers of what Libya can provide us, being oil etc. It looks like the British have been bought. And what's more Britain is a country that will let its Hostages die rather than pay a Ransom. Is that because a British life is cheap?
By the way isn't it about time you Americans freed a man who has no blood on his hands, him being Jonathan Jay Pollard.
If you let him free and travel to Israel
I can assure you he will not be received as a hero and the Government of Israel will thank President Obama for his compassion.
How about this for an 'explanation': You, the US, set Megrahi up, the case was ridiculous, yet the judges decided to do as they had been told and convict. You, the US, wanted Libya in the frame since the evidence pointing to Syria and Iran was inconvenient to your global plans, so you manufactured evidence, which was still too weak to convict, which is why his co-accused was aquitted. Think of his homecoming like that of Terry Waite: both innocent, both imprisoned in a foreign country for years, both eventually freed. Isn't it natural for people to welcome him back? All this posturing is for the gallery, lying politicians fooling the gullible public because if they knew what really went down they would be disgusted and angry. The UK government clearly approved, and despite the very public US pressure and anger since, that's also what the US wanted since for the appeal to continue would have meant a lot of dirty tricks coming out in the dirty washing. And you, the US, didn't want that. So US weasel words are total hypocrisy, grandstanding for the relatives and those of the right who don't do logical thinking.
The Scottish Assembly is NOT a Parliament, whatever else one may call it.