tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post2171596399088491137..comments2024-03-28T07:16:39.621+00:00Comments on Lallands Peat Worrier: New Lockerbie case poll on US Senate games...Lallands Peat Worrierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18276270498204697708noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post-52403550815858644232010-08-20T21:47:49.178+01:002010-08-20T21:47:49.178+01:00Indy has a point. Ever since the current guidance ...Indy has a point. Ever since the current guidance on compassionate release was brought in, all the prisoners who met its conditions have been released. I am pretty sure the civil servants will always advise their Ministers to do so, to avoid invidious discussions about Ministerial favour for one prisoner over another. And Ministers of whatever stripe have, in my view wisely, accepted this advice. And yes, I would think that advice was correct if it concerned Bilal Abdullah (whose sentence was deplorably disproportionate)or even Peter Tobin, who is very probably a much nastier piece of work than the other two. <br /><br />I have admitted my view that Mr Megrahi was improperly convicted. However, let us, as Almax suggests, accept that his conviction was the only reasonable basis we can work from. Even if he is as guilty as Satan Incarnate, I don't think anyone believes he came up with the plan to blow up Flight 103 himself. He was carrying out orders. I readily accept that is no excuse. But, in the version where Mr Megrahi is guilty, the person who ordered the bombing is now persona grata to both the US and the UK administrations. To shake the hand of the mastermind while keeping the mortally sick minion in jail is, frankly, immoral. Moreover this immorality is compounded by the fact that the US and UK alike harbour many of their respective operatives who have killed many more civilians than Mr Megrahi has, in this version. I don't see us handing over our killers to Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan for condign punishment. In these circumstances the view that we should have kept Mr Megrahi in jail till he died is a fine example of double standards.<br /><br />Anyway, is there anyone out there who would want to swap lives with Mr Megrahi? I thought not.Am Firinnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post-52844959463628320392010-08-20T14:12:47.953+01:002010-08-20T14:12:47.953+01:00His guilt or innocence isn't really the point ...His guilt or innocence isn't really the point Almax. Compassionate release is not extended on the basis that the prisoner might be innocent. It is extended on the basis that he or she is dying.<br /><br />Whether Megrahi died within three months or whether he has managed to cling on until now is also not the point. He is dying and is clearly too sick to be in prison. That is why the Prison Governor, medical officer and social work said that he should be released. <br /><br />The idea that he could stay in prison was and is a non-starter. The prison service did not want responsibility for his care because in their view he was too sick to remain incarcerated. So he was released.<br /><br />That’s actually the norm – I think part of the issue with this for the SNP is that people wrongly assumed that Kenny MacAskill intervened to make sure that Megrahi did not die in jail, based on the false assumption that releasing dying prisoners is unusual. I remember someone saying to me that Myra Hindley had died in jail and so should Megrahi. But Myra Hindley did not die in jail. She died in hospital – where she was taken as soon as she became too sick to remain in prison.<br /><br />The argument could then be made why was Megrahi not put in a Scottish hospital or kept under medical supervision in a private residence so that he could die in Scotland. Well let’s imagine what would be happening today if that had happened ,with half the world’s press surrounding him desperate to get a shot and shouting “Why aren’t you dead yet Mr Megrahi?” Seriously, the media hype and general hysteria there has been over this case during the past 12 months would have been magnified ten-fold if Megrahi had been kept in Scotland. Far simpler just to send him back.<br /><br />The only thing in my view that Kenny MacAskill got wromg was the way he pitched the release. I understand why he did that and he probably did have to make the attempt to connect with the Americans and explain his decision. But the truth is that there is too great a gulf. We have just ended up with debates about compassion against vengeance which simply extend the gulf. Let's face it, most Americans would have chosen to see Megrahi executed. That's just the way they are and nothing Kenny could have said or done would have made any difference.Indyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04383904151475839441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post-52493651005842323022010-08-20T10:24:49.864+01:002010-08-20T10:24:49.864+01:00Telling and interesting remarks in both cases, Am ...Telling and interesting remarks in both cases, Am Firinn & Almax. On the possibility of an informal meeting of Senator Menendez <i>(or one of his creatures)</i>, to refuse that would no doubt be an act of churlishness, despite his rubbish. <br /><br />It is interesting to return to what I was writing around this time last year. I wrote this post on <a href="http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-confusing-justice-with-mercy.html" rel="nofollow"><i>"confusing justice with mercy"</i></a> which precisely makes your point. In brief, I found then - and as you say, now - that many people reasoned thus - <i>if he did it, he should stay inside, if he didn't, he should be released.</i> <br /><br />However, for myself, I found this reasoning pitched me into a terribly imbroglio - to have the rightness of this decision rest on my ignorant apprehension of the justice of what transpired in Camp Zeist seemed and seems absurd. <br /><br />That is why I think you're right - your friends are in error and have mistaken justice for mercy. They are being inconsistent, this inconsistency facilitated by the familiar phrase "tempering justice with mercy". Detached from its forgecraft origins, this dominating metaphor sees the two ideas not as oil and water - but commixing to produce a single right result. Unless we distinguish the two issues clearly, mercy collapses into justice. We lose sight of why mercy may be a distinct human virtue. For myself, I prefer this formulation to "compassion" and would insist on significant distance being put between either of these two concepts and "forgiveness".Lallands Peat Worrierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07238432265194046726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post-52976899844372079732010-08-20T01:27:41.311+01:002010-08-20T01:27:41.311+01:00I disagreed with the decision to release Mr Megrah...I disagreed with the decision to release Mr Megrahi.<br /><br />In discussions with friends over the last 12 months, I have found it nearly impossible to separate the issue of 'compassionate release' from that of Megrahi's guilt or innocence. <br /><br />Almost all my acquaintances who approved of his release did so on the basis that "I don't think he was guilty of the crime".<br /><br />And, of course, if he was innocent then that would be a particularly excellent reason for releasing the man.<br /><br />But, the fact is that the only tribunal who heard all the evidence found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. His first appeal was refused. His second, SCCRC sponsored, appeal was dropped in circumstances which are still not clear.<br /><br />He thus stands convicted of the most atrocious crime ever committed in the United Kingdom (by-the-by, some of my friends occasionally throw into the mix the fact that there was 'no jury' as though that was a sinister flaw in the proceedings - but that was, of course, entirely Mr Megrahi's choice - a Scottish jury was available to him if he had wished).<br /><br />So, was he entitled to compassionate release?<br /><br />This time last year I carried out a wee (non-scientific) experiment - I asked all those I knew who agreed with Megrahi's release whether, in the event of Bilal Abdullah (the surviving Glasgow Airport bomber)becoming terminally ill they would extend the same compassion to him and release him from his 32 year sentence.<br /><br />Not one of them would.<br /><br />And yet, Abdullah didn't kill a single person. Indeed, such injuries as occurred were thankfully minor.<br /><br />Ah, BUT WE SAW HIM DO IT.<br /><br />The issue had nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with proof.<br /><br />Abdullah can rot in hell because we saw him do it.<br /><br />Megrahi can go home because we don't have film of him putting the bomb in the suitcase.<br /><br />(May I note en passant that Abdullah received a sentence of a minimum 32 years for conspiracy to murder, though he didn't in fact murder anyone, as against Megrahi receiving a sentence of a minimum of a mere 27 years for actually murdering 270 people - it seems as though the 'we saw you do it' principle was working even at the sentencing stage).<br /><br />It need hardly be said that I am not an authority on the mountains of evidence led in the Lockerbie trial, and therefore I do not feel as bold as Am Firinn in suggesting that "there was a shedload of reasonable doubts". <br /><br />I am not very keen for the criminal justice system to be run on the basis of public acclamation - however influential an article in Private Eye or elsewhere may be, however sincere Mr Swire's or Professor Black's beliefs are, the only way of determining issues of guilt and innocence is in the Court. <br /><br />Megrahi was convicted - thus he committed the crime - that was the basis on which Mr MacAskill made his decision, and it is the only reasonable basis that we can work from.<br /><br />In my opinion, and I may well be completely wrong, Megrahi's crime was so grave, and the period of his elapsed sentence so relatively short, that 'compassion' was not appropriate in his case. It is, unfortunately, very easy to be compassionate when you are yourself not the victim.<br /><br />Finally (and apologies for rambling) Kenny made great play a year ago about the Scottish capacity for compassion. I think that's largely tripe - if I may revert back to the Glasgow airport attack - I am morally certain that everyone in Scotland who saw the first bomber fully ablaze thought to themselves, "Burn you bas***d, burn"almaxnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638916042737526171.post-52876702167436435982010-08-19T20:50:34.517+01:002010-08-19T20:50:34.517+01:00No-one asked me. However, in general, I think the ...No-one asked me. However, in general, I think the Scottish Government was right to let him go, was right in its (stated) reasoning in deciding to do so, and right to invite Senator Menendez to go forth and multiply. So it is disappointing they are offering to meet the self-publicising pipsqueak, if he can screw up his courage sufficiently to cross the pond. No doubt this polling gives some background to what otherwise appears to me to be a gesture too magnanimous even for our famously magnanimous leaders.<br /><br />However, at bottom, my views are conditioned by the fact that, though I don't know whether Mr Megrahi is guilty or not, I certainly do know, having done the exams, that the standard of proof in Scots criminal cases is "beyond reasonable doubt". And here there was a shedload of reasonable doubts. Don't ask me - ask the SCCRC. So the man really shouldn't have been in jail in the first place, and it would redound to the greater credit of all if they would just make that point instead of professing (probably mendaciously) to believe there was anything correct about the original conviction, as opposed to the kind of raison d’état at which Lord Braxfield himself might well have balked.Am Firinnnoreply@blogger.com