The Times and Lockerbie

The Times makes a very good point in its Leader today that the prospects of Ministers of the Crown being hauled before the Senate Inquiry into BP’s potential involvement in the Lockerbie bomber’s release is unwelcome. It points out  that the Senate needs to remember that these are Ministers of a sovereign country, not a vassal state. It is absolutely critical to assert our  sovereignty in this whole affair. It is indeed true that the majority of the victims were American and it was an an American owned plane. However the crime occurred in British Airspace above Scotland with its own legal sovereignty and therefore outside U.S. jurisdiction in all respects.

Can anyone imagine what the response would be if a Commons Select Committee summoned members of the U.S. Government to sit before it for interrogation? This has got to stop. America may be angry with reason, but it has nevertheless to behave. I disagree with the Times’s verdict, as do many of the victims’ families, that it was wrong to release Al Magrahi. To detain him required that the evidence of his involvement in the bombing was both extensive and compelling.

It was none of these things. Indeed some are of the view that it was fabricated. The story behind the story is that if he had not been released, his Appeal would have revealed evidence which would have led to his conviction being quashed. The embarrassment of those disclosures and who was responsible for setting him up as a totem of guilt to which understandable anger and hate could be channelled, is, if there is one, the hidden reason why he was allowed home. The dropping of his Appeal and the suppression of the evidence to go before it was a surprising condition. That is the story the Times needs to look at.

To honour the memory of the loved ones who perished, truth and justice must prevail. So far this has not happened. America needs to see this. So does the Times. It may be best for the British Government to set up a Chilcot style enquiry to get at the real truth. Many of the victim families would applaud that.