Lockerbie bomber release: for and against

Speculation that the Libyan convicted of killing 270 people might be released has raised the issue: was al-Megrahi ever guilty at all?

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 13, 2009

There is increased speculation today that the 'Lockerbie bomber', Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, convicted of killing 270 people after planting a bomb on Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988, is about to be released from jail in Scotland on compassionate grounds.

Megrahi is said to be in the final stages of prostrate cancer in Greenock Prison, where he is serving a life sentence. He is known to have been visited there last week by the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and, according to the BBC, the Parole Board for Scotland has been asked to give its opinion on a compassionate release.

Although the Scottish government continues to claim that no decision has been taken, Glenn Campbell, BBC's Scotland political correspondent, says his sources claim Megrahi could be reunited with his wife and five children in Libya before Ramadan starts next Friday.

All 243 passengers and 16 crew died when a bomb exploded on the jetliner bound for New York from Heathrow on December 21, 1988. Eleven more people were killed by debris falling on the Dumfriesshire village of Lockerbie, bringing the total death toll to 270.

Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, has always maintained his innocence and is still due another appeal. If he is released on compassionate grounds, that appeal can go ahead. If he is released as part of a prisoner exchange - an alternative proposed earlier this year by the Libyans - then the appeal would no longer be granted.

Pan Am was still one of America's two big national carriers in 1988, so the majority of the victims were American. Magrehi's release is expected to attract more outrage in America than in Scotland because, generally, Americans believe he is guilty while many British relatives of the dead accept his claim that he was wrongly convicted in January 2001 following a lengthy joint investigation by Scottish police and the FBI.

FOR AND AGAINST:
♦ Susan Cohen of New Jersey, whose 20-year-old daughter Theodora was one of 35 Syracuse University students who died in the bombing, said the idea that Megrahi might be released was vile. "It makes me sick," she said. "It just shows that the power of oil money counts for more than justice. There have been so many attempts to let him off. It has to do with money and power and giving Gaddafi [the Libyan leader] what he wants. My feelings, as a victim, apparently count for nothing."

♦ Kathleen Flynn, another New Jersey woman who lost a child in the bombing, said Megrahi's cancer was not a good enough reason to free him. "My husband had prostate cancer," she said. "He had it 10 years ago and he is still alive and well 10 years later."

♦ English doctor Jim Swire, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Flora in the bombing, believes Megrahi is innocent and that it would be to Scotland's credit if he were released. Swire points out that if Megrahi is sent home as part of the controversial prisoner exchange proposal, the appeal will have to be stopped and "the truth is less likely to surface".

♦ Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill in the bombing, is one of the British relatives who wants to know why no others have been hunted down and brought to justice. "As far as I know the Scottish authorities and no-one else has done anything to try and find who these others were that were supposed to be implicated, so the whole thing is really very unsatisfactory".

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 13, 2009

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Absolutely not! He should remain incarcerated for life.

Posted by Andrew Blair at 10:10am on August 13, 2009

No, he should not be released. What compassion did he show when he murdered the passengers and crew of the plane. Terrorists should rot in hell!

Posted by Dave Cheetham at 12:23pm on August 13, 2009

Personally,I believe that the miscreant should remain just where he is. The cancer could be God's punishment for what he did. He was found guilty by a court of law. There is NO reason to set him free.

Posted by John Jester at 12:59pm on August 13, 2009

Despite all the mutterings of the conspiracy theorists this man is guilty as charged and is responsible for death of 270 innocent people. The fact that others have not been brought to trial does not change that.

Posted by James Gow at 1:26pm on August 13, 2009

I always had my doubts about this fellow's guilt. I am glad thet he is being freed. It really is a pity that a greater attempt was not made to find the real culprit(s)

Posted by Yolande Agble at 8:15pm on August 13, 2009

We have quite a few home based criminals sent back here to finish there sentences and are released early....So let this man go back to his homeland...Besides that is he really the guilty one???????

Posted by Collier715 at 8:49pm on August 13, 2009

The first few posters seem not to have any doubts, which indicates a lack of clear thinking since it was so obviously a put up job by the CIA to involve Libya. The case stank from the start, and who ever heard of two people charged with conspiracy with one found not guilty and the other guilty? Who did he conspire with? Many of the relatives are suspicious, and several are convinced he is innocent. Only Americans seem unable to understand it was not only a bad decision to charge them, but the verdict was ludicrous and plainly wrong...If the state had nothing to hide, it wouldn't have insisted he withdraw his appeal [at which the truth might have come out] before considering him for compassionate release. Think about it. For all you one track minds; the CIA had operatives involved in arms and drug smuggling with a Palestinian terrorist cell, one of them was aboard the plane along with a large quantity of drugs [picked up by men in black limos before even the local police arrived and testified to by several locals] clearly their operative was rumbled by the terror cell [not Libyan] he had infiltrated, so he was the target.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 12:57pm on August 18, 2009

The evidence against Mr Megrahi was fairly circumstantial to begin with. One of the star witnesses was a Maltese shopkeeper who purported sold Mr Megrahi clothes later found in the wreckage of the aircraft. The shopkeeper later was paid millions to resettle in Australia, and is quoted as saying all Arabs looked the same to him. This does not exactly enhance his credibility. The purported transaction occurred on a day Mr Megrahi was not in Malta at all, as per records. Similarly, the evidence that the baggage warehouse at Heathrow used by Pan Am was broken into the night of the explosion was ignored by the trial. There is some more evidence casting doubt on the guilty verdict that will probably not see the light of day at this time as the second appeal has been dropped. In any case, Megrahi himself, with his long record of insisting his innocence, and messages of sympathy to the bombing victims, does not fit the stereotype of a terrorist. There are many reasons why at least some of the Lockerbie victims' relatives support the decision to release him, and compassion is nowhere at the top of the list.

Posted by SAS at 9:32pm on August 21, 2009

Ther Jury obviously thought that he was indeed guilty .they know considerably more than me! so i will abide by their decision. No he should not be freed>

Posted by Seanofaus at 2:46am on August 26, 2009

The poster above clearly does not know the first thing about the case, given that Megrahi was never tried in front of a jury, but three judges. Ah, I hear you cry, but these were highly educated, sound-thinking men, so I trust their decision. But they don't even seem to trust their own decision, as Lord Sutherland wrote in his judgment, "In selecting parts of the evidence which seem to fit together and ignoring parts which might not fit, it is possible to read into a mass of conflicting evidence a pattern or conclusion which is not really justified". That the same judge went onto convict is pretty astounding.

Posted by John Ashmore at 8:49pm on September 5, 2009