Kenny MacAskill continues to face criticism over his decision to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, exploding over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, and killing 270 people.
From the Associated Press:
Scottish legislators gathered Monday for an emergency meeting on the government's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber as critics claimed the act could severely damaged relations with the United States.
The government of First Minister Alex Salmond has faced unrelenting criticism from the both the U.S. government and the families of American bombing victims for freeing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
The Libyan — the only man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing — was released last week on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. He has returned to his native Libya.
In a strongly worded letter to the Scottish government, FBI director Robert Mueller said al-Megrahi's release gave comfort to terrorists, while Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said releasing the bomber was "obviously a political decision."
Lawmakers want to question Salmond's minority government about the decision, with some calling for Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to resign. MacAskill has said the decision was his alone, followed all the correct procedures under Scottish law and was not influenced by political considerations.
Some Scottish lawmakers want to distance themselves from the decision by Scotland's nationalist administration, which advocates full independence from Britain.
"Today is about showing the world that Kenny MacAskill did not speak for Scotland in making this decision," said Richard Baker, the Labour Party's Scottish justice spokesman.
More, from the BBC.
Needless to say, the release of Megrahi has resulted in a lot of political posturing.
There's outrage aplenty.
But MacAskill also has his supporters.
From the Telegraph:
Nothing in his experience of life or politics could have prepared Kenny MacAskill for the walk towards that podium last Thursday and I wondered if he would endure the ordeal ahead. Scotland's justice minister, an honest journeyman in the minority part-government of a relatively unimportant country, had nothing beyond a desire to see that natural justice must prevail as he pondered his decision to show compassion to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.
This is the man whom Scots justice had found guilty of the biggest terrorist atrocity committed on these islands, the bomb aboard Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. He knew that his decision was being scrutinised on four continents and that his character would be trashed before the hour was spent. Yet he emerged from his trial with his stature increased and Scotland woke up on Friday with its reputation for decency and fairness enhanced.
MacAskill could have washed his hands of this issue and simply had a terminally ill man spend the few remaining days of his life in a Greenock prison cell. Few, beyond the masters of the British petroleum industry, would have demurred. Certainly not Downing Street, whose haunted incumbent would have been praying for such a verdict, and certainly not America whose default position on justice is: "When in doubt, hang them from the neck… especially if they are poor, black and uneducated." In the Arab world, there would have been desultory protests but nothing more. Baghdad, Helmand, Kabul and the West Bank are of far more pressing concern than the final resting place of a man they all wished to forget.
But this unprepossessing minister of justice sought to ignore all the serried interests of the global supermen. Instead, he found refuge in the fundamental principles of a judicial system that has served Scotland soundly for more than 400 years. For 16 years now, our statutes have given us leave to release from prison anyone who is deemed by competent medical authority to have three months or less to live. It was a concession rooted in compassion, pity and forgiveness. Few in the United Kingdom have ever taken issue with it. It is a good and just law. MacAskill simply applied it. In this case, he used it merely to allow a murderer go home to die. Before Megrahi, 23 other prisoners had been shown a similar mercy in Scotland. It was also a decision buttressed by two oncologists and two urologists who provided written documentation that, in their opinions, the Libyan prisoner was in the very last stages of his final agony.
Nor had MacAskill been party to any quid pro quo deal that involved Megrahi dropping his appeal against his original conviction in return for compassionate release. The desired outcome for the Scottish government was for Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail and for his appeal to proceed.
...One senior SNP politician I spoke to last night stated categorically that no deal had been struck with Megrahi: "Politically, the worst option for us was the one chosen by Kenny MacAskill. But it was also the right and proper one and consistent with the principles this nation strives to govern itself by. What no one could have foreseen two years ago was the onset of the prisoner's aggressive prostate cancer and this changed everything."
So did MacAskill do the morally right thing? Was it a selfless act on his part to free Megrahi?
A piece in the Telegraph by Stephen Hough highlights the Christian overtones of MacAskill's words, speaking of "compassion" and "mercy."
However, he uses MacAskill's terminology against him, concluding that MacAskill overstepped his authority, acting unilaterally to grant Megrahi mercy.
Hough writes:
‘Justice’, in practical legal terms, is in the hands of the courts, and I am amazed that one man could make such a sweeping decision to hold or release someone like this; but ‘mercy’ (in MacAskill’s terminology) can only come from God. I dearly hope for unlimited mercy for all people from God, but I think it was misguided and inappropriate for the Justice Secretary to take on that task himself on behalf of those who were so deeply affected personally by that Pan Am plane’s plunge to the ground in 1988.
A piece that was published on the New York Times website on August 20, includes remarks from MacAskill that strike me as profoundly misguided and offensive, and not the least bit compassionate or Christian.
Scotland’s justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, announced that Mr. Megrahi, “convicted in 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing, now terminally ill with prostate cancer, be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die.”
With his release, Mr. MacAskill said, Mr. Megrahi “now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power.”
“It is one that no court, in any jurisdiction, in any land, could revoke or overrule,” he said. “It is terminal, final and irrevocable. He is going to die.”
I strongly object to MacAskill's assertion that Megrahi's illness is a "sentence imposed by a higher power."
This supposed man of compassion is seriously lacking, in my opinion.
So according to MacAskill, being terminally ill is Megrahi's punishment for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, meted out by God, and that should satisfy those wanting and deserving justice?
What does that suggest? What does that say to all those suffering from dreadful illnesses? That they are being punished by God?
Are we to equate a terminally ill child with Megrahi?
What did the child do that would condemn him or her to "[face] a sentence imposed by a higher power"?
I fail to see any compassion in MacAskill's statement that Megrahi is being punished and justice is being done by virtue of the fact that he's ill, facing a death sentence that he believes is imposed by a higher power.
If MacAskill thinks that terminal illness takes the place of a sentence handed down by a court of law, that it's the ultimate punishment from God, then I think he should explain why those who are innocent, who aren't terrorists, are afflicted with devastating illnesses.
MacAskill's remarks were terribly callous, lacked compassion, and showed no mercy.
___________________
Related:
Here's an interesting piece written by John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations:
Outrage was the uniform American response to Scotland's release last week of Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of blowing Pan Am 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie in December, 1988. Two hundred and seventy innocent people died in that act of terrorism, of whom 189 were Americans, many of them students on their way home to celebrate Christmas with their families.
Outrage also greeted the public celebration of Megrahi's arrival in Libya and his warm reception from Muammar Gaddafi. These manifestations of insensitivity only highlight the shamefulness of Britain's fundamental mistake in letting Megrahi go free, regardless of his condition. "Compassion" has no place here. Releasing him to die at home means that he has spent less than two weeks in jail for each of his 270 victims. They never made it home.
The justifiable disgust over Megrahi's release sadly underlines what amounts to a spectacular failure of American diplomacy. "Obamamania" overseas is a dominant theme of the media, endlessly recounting how the US position in the world has
improved since President Bush's departure. "Engagement" with friend and adversary alike is the Obama administration's hallmark, with diplomatic advances expected to flow like wine.
So what happened? The state department said on Friday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked "for weeks and months" to persuade Britain not to release the murderer. Both Washington and London all but begged Gaddafi not to hold public celebrations on Megrahi's arrival in Tripoli. Yet Britain, the other half of the "special relationship", ignored Clinton's efforts, as did Libya, which only recently resumed full diplomatic relations with America.
This is effective US diplomacy? This is one of the tangible benefits of Obamamania? The purported "decision" by Scotland (under whose laws America, Britain and Libya agreed Megrahi would be tried) was almost surely taken at the behest of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Government. Even worse, Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, and Lord Trefgarne, president of the Libyan-British Business Council, have both essentially confirmed that Megrahi's release was intended to facilitate enhanced commercial relationships between Britain and Libya. Gaddafi said the release "will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of co-operation between the two countries". Is there any doubt of his meaning?
Cabinet protestations to the contrary are increasingly hollow, as inconvenient new evidence, such as Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis's letter to Scotland's justice secretary, demonstrates. For sure, there was no "deal" between Brown and Gaddafi or their underlings, no signed contract, no express quid pro quo between Megrahi's release and business for Britain. In reality, of course, that is not the way it's done. All denials of such an explicit transaction are probably "the truth", but not the whole truth. Sequencing the release and the subsequent contracts was designed to enhance official deniability, but the linkage is palpable to all concerned.
Expert Cabinet spin cannot hide the emerging reality. Some say Brown listened to those British victims' families who still doubt Megrahi's guilt. Why does he have so little faith in Scottish justice? And if Scotland (birthplace of two of my grandparents) can't get mass terrorism right, what does that tell foreigners thinking about visiting?
In fact, this is merely the latest example of a fundamentally flawed American approach to international terrorism, begun in the Clinton administration. Although rejected by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Clinton philosophy that terrorism was simply a law-enforcement matter is again in vogue in full force under President Obama. Both the first President Bush and President Clinton should have treated the destruction of Pan Am 103 as an attack on the US and responded accordingly. This mass murder was not simply a bank robbery writ large; it was an act of state aggression almost surely directed by Libya's government, then, as now, in Gaddafi's hands.
Bolton makes some legitimate points about Obama-mania, "'engagement' with friend and adversary alike," and treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment