By the way, I dropped a stitch. I think Tripoli is about 1500 miles from Glasgow, not 5,000!
Compassionate release is not based on the suspected innocence of the person in question. The issue is was al-Megrahi a suitable candidate for a compassionate release under Scottish law? I don't think so. I think MacAskill was mislead by British and Libyan doctors.
Of course the compassionate release wasn't based on suspected innocence! Everybody has been quite clear about that. It was based on professional advice regarding Megrahi's clinical condition. I merely point out that if you start agitating for him to receive harsher treatment than he's actually been given, you might bear in mind that he could well be innocent of that crime.
The fact remains that it's very difficult to predict how long someone has to live. Everybody knows that. Everybody has anecdotes of people who beat the "predictions", and of course of people who died much sooner than expected. The three months thing is only a guideline, anyway. This is the only case where anybody has stressed about it, after the fact. Even Biggs isn't generating these column inches, which is actually a bit surprising given his history.
Was anybody pushing the envelope? I don't know, and I submit none of us knows. Megrahi's dad is currently ascribing it all to positive thinking and woo-woo "alternative" treatments. How often have we heard that one!
Mr Ali al-Megrahi believes that good genes, 'positive thinking' and alternative medicines could explain his son's remarkable survival.
It's the sort of thing you hear all the time from the homoeopaths. Of course the patients on the other end of the bell curve don't tend to make it into the miracle cures books.
There is, of course, the observation that several different interests all came together to support Megrahi's release. The Libyans wanted him home, obviously. They don't think he did it, but see him as the scapegoat offered up to secure Libya's re-entry into the international community, sanctions lifted and so on. The Westminster government was pretty keen to fall in with this, see the deal in the desert and the BP oil deal. The USA concurred with that, because US companies also have huge commercial interests in that region. (Never forget that part. Obama's public condemnation hid a private satisfaction with the outcome.)
The trouble was that after the election of 3rd May 2007, none of these interests could do a damn thing about it. The power to release Megrahi lay with the Scottish government, which was not at all minded to fall in with Tony Blair's prisoner transfer machinations, and had no interest in international trade negotiations. Megrahi himself wasn't minded to apply for prisoner transfer anyway, preferring to stay put in the hope of clearing his name on appeal. While he was in good health, stalemate.
The appeal was the problem. It both prevented any possibility of prisoner transfer, and was in itself potentially highly embarrassing. Megrahi's lawyers were agitating for sight of certain documents the government absolutely, definitely, no way, wanted to release. Even if that hurdle was cleared by the "special advocate" ploy, the appeal was likely to be successful, leaving everybody in the embarrassing position of having nobody convicted of Scotland's worst atrocity, and no suspects either. The best they could do was drag their feet and delay the appeal process as long as possible. Which I have to say they were doing quite well at, but that couldn't go on forever.
The cancer diagnosis changed all that, simply by changing Megrahi's priorities. His plan, just to sit it out until the appeal process ground to completion, wasn't going to work. He didn't have that long. He became persuadable.
This is where it gets slightly Machiavellian. The Scottish government didn't want to go the prisoner transfer route (which would have secured withdrawal of the appeal), because they would then have got huge political stick for doing Tony Blair's wishes. They were prepared to go for compassionate release, because that was an independent decision politically, but the snag was, it didn't require withdrawal of the appeal. However, it was vital to get the appeal withdrawn too.
Somehow, Kenny MacAskill, while all along intending to go the compassionate release route, managed to pressurise Megrahi to withdraw the appeal anyway. The minute Megrahi signed on the dotted line, the compassionate release was announced.
Given the general eagerness to get all this done, as all the interests came together to support the release, did they pull the trigger a few months too soon? I have no idea, and I submit neither has any other member of the public. The unpredictability of cancer survival times is still a fact, and Karol Sikora is still saying he's astonished Megrahi is still alive.
The thing is, this is a complicated political football that has been kicked around here for years. Personally, I don't feel the slightest outrage that Megrahi got to go home, and is so far beating the predictions. Since he probably didn't do it anyway, I can't see any reason to stress about it.
I can see why people who didn't have any idea what was going on, might react negatively to hearing, out of the blue, "Lockerbie bomber released". But frankly, it ain't that simple. If we're into outrage, mine's reserved for Kenny's underhand little ploy in forcing the withdrawal of that appeal, which might have got us a bit further in finding out what really happened in 1988. 'Cos we certainly don't know that at present.
Rolfe.
