A Place to Stand

The First Minister accused Tony Blair of ignoring the Scottish government and the entire Scottish legal system by signing an agreement with Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi over prisoner transfers from Britain to Libya.

Complicated case.

On the one hand this is a blatant disregard for the entire Scottish judicial progress. When France arranged that the guy that blew up the Greenpeace boat "serve his time in a French prison" they very quickly released him. Does anybody doubt that the Libyans will do the same, or that anybody in the British government knows this? It shows a complete contempt for the Scottish judicial process.

On the other hand the Scottish judiciary, almost all of whom were at one time or another involved in this caee, are contemptable. Eveyone knows that al Megrahi is almost certainly wholly innocent. The initial investigation centred on Palestinians employed by Syria (in turn working for Iran who was, quite reasonably, incensed at the US deliberate shooting down of a regularly scheduled civilian airliner over the Gulf).. All the evidence pointed to this - right up to the time when Syria became our ally against Iraq in the Kuwait war. At which point Libya was fitted up & Megrahi became the necessary human sacrifice.

The fact that the last prosecution witness said on oath that it was widely known that this was a CIA fit up would have given any honest judges no alternative but to find him not guilty. On the other hand these are judges who have shown not the slightest concern about one of their number, Lord Bonomy being involved in the kangaroo court which held Milosevic for 4 1/2 years without producing any evidence & then poisoned him.

Nobody comes out of this looking remotely honest & it is fitting that his release should come as part of a corrupt government deal with a Moslem dictator since that is how it started.

Nonetheless if al Magrahi is innocent he should be free.