the Scottish government on Thursday ordered the release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, permitting Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent, to return home after serving 8 years of a 27-year minimum sentence on charges of murdering 270 people in Britain’s worst terrorist episode.”
The man who made and announced that decision, Scotland’s justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has been on television explaining himself for much of the day.
Danny Lawson/Pool, via Associated Press Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi at the airport in Glasgow, clutching his release papers before boarding a flight to Libya.
The Associated Press posted some of Mr. MacAskill’s official statement announcing the release on its YouTube channel. The BBC published a longer edit of the video, showing more of the statement, on its Web site.
The complete text of Mr. MacAskill’s statement is available on the Scottish government’s Web site.
Later in the day, Britain’s Channel 4 News aired this interview with Mr. MacAskill, in which he was grilled about his decision:
On Wednesday, The Lede looked at Mr. Megrahi’s case, and the different reactions to the idea of releasing him on compassionate grounds from some of the families of the victims of the bombing.
Many of the responses from American readers to our post on Wednesday about Mr. Megrahi’s case assumed that he was rightly convicted of the bombing — while several British readers pointed to doubts about his conviction. While we haven’t had time yet to lay out the facts of the case, one reader sent us a link to this article from the Scottish legal magazine The Firm written by Hans Köchler, who was an international observer at the special Scottish court that convened in the Netherlands to try Mr. Megrahi. In his article, Mr. Köchler lists some of the objections to Mr. Megrahi’s conviction that have led to suspicions that he may have been wrongly convicted:
The Opinions of the Court issued by the two panels of Scottish judges were inconsistent and based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence; on testimony of at least two key witnesses who had received huge amounts of money; on the opinions of forensic experts of, to say the least, dubious reputation and with problematic links to intelligence services; and on at least one piece of evidence that had been inserted at a later stage into the list of documents and apparently been tampered with. Furthermore, vital evidence such as that of a break-in at a luggage storage area at Heathrow airport in the night before the departure of the doomed flight had been withheld from the court during the first trial (a fact that still has not been properly explained).
The man who made and announced that decision, Scotland’s justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has been on television explaining himself for much of the day.
Danny Lawson/Pool, via Associated Press Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi at the airport in Glasgow, clutching his release papers before boarding a flight to Libya.
The Associated Press posted some of Mr. MacAskill’s official statement announcing the release on its YouTube channel. The BBC published a longer edit of the video, showing more of the statement, on its Web site.
The complete text of Mr. MacAskill’s statement is available on the Scottish government’s Web site.
Later in the day, Britain’s Channel 4 News aired this interview with Mr. MacAskill, in which he was grilled about his decision:
On Wednesday, The Lede looked at Mr. Megrahi’s case, and the different reactions to the idea of releasing him on compassionate grounds from some of the families of the victims of the bombing.
Many of the responses from American readers to our post on Wednesday about Mr. Megrahi’s case assumed that he was rightly convicted of the bombing — while several British readers pointed to doubts about his conviction. While we haven’t had time yet to lay out the facts of the case, one reader sent us a link to this article from the Scottish legal magazine The Firm written by Hans Köchler, who was an international observer at the special Scottish court that convened in the Netherlands to try Mr. Megrahi. In his article, Mr. Köchler lists some of the objections to Mr. Megrahi’s conviction that have led to suspicions that he may have been wrongly convicted:
The Opinions of the Court issued by the two panels of Scottish judges were inconsistent and based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence; on testimony of at least two key witnesses who had received huge amounts of money; on the opinions of forensic experts of, to say the least, dubious reputation and with problematic links to intelligence services; and on at least one piece of evidence that had been inserted at a later stage into the list of documents and apparently been tampered with. Furthermore, vital evidence such as that of a break-in at a luggage storage area at Heathrow airport in the night before the departure of the doomed flight had been withheld from the court during the first trial (a fact that still has not been properly explained).
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