Tuesday 20 August 2013

He went to Holland expecting justice and never got it

[Four years ago today Abdelbaset Megrahi left Scotland and returned to Libya, having been released on compassionate grounds by Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. Eddie MacKechnie, the Scottish solicitor who represented him when his successful application was submitted to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission issued a statement on Mr Megrahi’s release.  It reads as follows:]

I am very pleased that Baset has gone home to his wife, family and friends. I strongly believe both Lamin, my original client, and Baset are entirely innocent and thus victims.

To me Baset is a hero and deserved any hint of a hero's welcome he was allowed. He went with Lamin to Holland over 10 years ago expecting justice and never got it. He took the risk for his country and he was welcomed as a hero of his people not because he was ever a terrorist but because he is a son of Libya who suffered for her.

Of course I am sad he abandoned his Appeal he fought so very hard to obtain but I know he had no choice. Politics long usurped any role justice had to play.

The Justice Minister was right to release Baset. It was a decent decision. It was to be expected that as Minister he would support the conviction and laud the Judiciary, Prosecution and Police. It was striking he did not mention another Scottish, statutory body. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Had he forgotten their findings in favour of Baset and a new Appeal?

The inconvenient truth of this shocking case is that all is far from well within the Scottish legal system and sick to the core in scheming Whitehall. Pressurising a dying man, so desperate to return home, into dropping his legitimate appeal was beneath contempt but at least consistent. To suggest there was no such pressure is preposterous.

[Other reactions to the release can be found on this blog in posts from 20 August 2009 and the following days.]

1 comment:

  1. If this,

    "The Justice Minister was right to release Baset. It was a decent decision."

    involved any sort of decency, then this,

    "It was to be expected that as Minister he would support the conviction and laud the Judiciary, Prosecution and Police."

    still makes no sense at all.

    A decent decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, maybe, but decency as a principle left the building when Megrahi was essentially coerced into dropping his appeal. Compassionate release would have allowed his appeal to continue.

    "It was striking he did not mention another Scottish, statutory body. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission."

    MacAskill, as Justice Minister, (and a lawyer!) ignored the SCCRC findings completely when he made the Big Speech in the Parliament ahead of Megrahi's release. He declared the original verdict sound. He did not, even as Justice Minister, have the authority to declare such a thing when the SCCRC had already made public the fact that they had found SIX grounds to suggest otherwise. Minister or not he did not have the authority to proceed as if the SCCRC findings had never existed. That he did so, in itself, was a blatant attempt to pervert the course of justice by abusing his position to sweep it all under the carpet.

    ReplyDelete