Libya, Scotland, the USA and al-Megrahi’s Release

August 22, 2009 Longrider General News, Political 6

I see that there is an international wankfest going on over scenes from Libya today.

I listened to Alistair Darling blathering on the BBC yesterday evening saying that all reasonable people would be disgusted by the reception given to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on his return to Libya. Really? I wasn’t. Frankly, it was precisely what any reasonably intelligent person would have expected. After all, as far as Libyans are concerned, al-Megrahi is an innocent man who took one for the team. And, frankly, like the Devil’s Kitchen, I am similarly inclined to that view.

Still, the cloud of a miscarriage of justice does not stem the angry voices who wanted the man to die in prison for an offence that, in all probability, he did not commit. This, though, is an irrelevance, they want someone – anyone – to pay for the loss of life twenty years ago. This is not justice, it is revenge and in all likelihood, misdirected revenge.

Then we have the Americans. Hillary Clinton when asked what she thought should happen should have dodged the question. What she should have said in response to questions on this issue was; this is a matter for the Scottish Justice Minister and not one for a US secretary of State. In short, it is none of the USA’s business. But, then, US foreign policy seems to revolve around telling other people how to run their countries (by force if necessary). Yes, I know, I know, Britain is just as guilty, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and American politicians placing pressure on their Scottish counterparts was nothing short of a disgrace.

Let’s presume though, for a moment, that there is no cloud of doubt about al-Megrahi’s conviction and that the court did, indeed, get it right and the eight years he has served were thoroughly deserved. Was the decision to release him sound? Well, to those ranting voices who wanted him to rot inside, to die without going home as the victims of Lockerbie died without going home, I would point out only this; compassion – extended even to one’s deadliest enemies – is what sets us apart from those who would destroy us.

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6 Comments

  1. The American administration seems to be desperate someone should ‘pay’ for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 – but they seem to conveniently forget no-one has ‘paid’ for the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 over the Straits of Hormuz in 1988……

  2. I wasn’t. Frankly, it was precisely what any reasonably intelligent person would have expected. After all, as far as Libyans are concerned, al-Megrahi is an innocent man who took one for the team.

    Took one for the team being the operative word here.
    .-= My last blog ..Blind to the glaring obvious =-.

  4. The “compassionate release” lie was a thin veil for the real quid pro quo. The Lockerbie bomber’s release is one of several payments on Kaddafi’s terrorist extortion demands that secured release of (what Saif Ghadafi admitted) were brutally prison raped and tortured EU nurse hostages.

    =====
    FLASHBACK 2007: Qaddafi Wants Money and Lockerbie Attacker for Nurses’ Release
    http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=75328

    Muammar Qaddafi has officially stated his conditions for the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya, a website of the Libyan opposition claims.

    Cited by the Bulgarian national radio, the site claims that Qaddafi has sent an official note to the EU country members and the US, requesting compensations for the families of the HIV-infected children and the release of the terrorist from Lockerbie… The UK should help with the release of the Lockerbie bomber, the note also says. He could be released because he has already served his sentence, or he could receive amnesty, or be extradited to Libya, Qaddafi suggests.
    =====
    This bald-faced hostage extortion payoff does not bode well for Iran’s three UC-Berkeley hostages. Westerners should expect more of this old school hostage extortion game in the future… because it clearly works.

    /once again, terrorism pays… handsomely

  5. The sad irony (clearly lost on many Brits) is that Kaddafi was the IRA. Kaddafi financed, supported, trained and armed the IRA for decades.

    Up to 6,000 innocents were killed or injured with Libyan supplied guns and explosives. And many IRA bombs employed the same Libyan Semtex that destroyed Clipper Maid of the Seas.

    IRA victims still seek to hold Kaddafi accountable for those countless bloody atrocities.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/29/northernireland-libya

    Kaddafi’s IRA proxies might still be busy murdering innocents, if not for the heroic efforts of Lockerbie victims’ families to sanction and isolate Libya.

    /but no good deed goes unpunished

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