Merged Lockerbie bomber alive after 9 months

Darat said:
Was sitting with the other half enjoying a sandwich in the sunshine and we had Any Answers on in the background (I've heard that it is good to raise your heartbeat every so often and it's much easier than exercise) and your email was read out and I said - "That sounds like someone from the Forum" and lo and behold it was you!
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I usually call it "the green crayon brigade", and often switch off half way through, but I thought it was worth a shot.

I wish Dalyell would calm down a bit. He's making the same error as Caustic Logic, but he does it all the time, not just when he's rushed and tired. He started by making the same point as I did, but then launched into his perennial mantra of getting involved a few days after the bombing when one of his consituents approached him with concerns that the crash scene was being invaded by Americans who were interfering with the evidence.

Er, and? You can't make a case from scratch that the Americans were engaged in some dastardly cover-up right from day one, live on air talking to Jonathan Dimbleby. The point to hammer home is that MacAskill possibly/probably blackmailed Megrahi to drop his appeal. And that the appeal was well-founded, not a technicality. Even wittering on about Maltese clothes and showers of rain and a burly six-foot-tall purchaser in his fifties is way OTT for a programme like that.

There are two simple answers to his point about the Americans. One is that FBI officers came over to Scotland to assist the enquiry pretty much as soon as they could get there. They were not supposed to be interfering with evidence, but it has to be acknowledged that they were there legitimately. The other is that there were CIA officials on that plane, with their luggage - which was by then scattered across Dumfriesshire. It's perfectly possible there was a covert US operation to recover that luggage and its contents before anyone else got their hands on it. This does not add up to any wild conspiracy to frame Abdelbaset Megrahi three years later.

It's got more layers than an onion, but you have to peel them off one at a time, separate them, and concentrate on the important bits.

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
The point to hammer home is that MacAskill possibly/probably blackmailed Megrahi to drop his appeal.
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If that was the case (and I agree it seems to fit a lot of the circumstances), why has Megrahi not come out and said so post release?

The note of meeting has been published, if he were to claim it to be inaccurate that would be dynamite and there is no obvious downside to him in doing so. Unless of course the Libyan government is also applying pressure to him not to do so.
 
Rat said:
Heh, I heard that on Any Answers while driving to town and, although yours is a more common name in Scotland than it here, I immediately knew it was you.
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I didn't sign my full name to the email, and it isn't in my email address either, but they seem to have got it nevertheless. Doesn't matter.

Rolfe.
 
And it's also odd since I have no idea how I know your name. I can't remember your having ever mentioned it here. Hmm.
 
Rat said:
And it's also odd since I have no idea how I know your name. I can't remember your having ever mentioned it here. Hmm.
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There are a couple of places in the science forum where my name has come up - it's on the BVVS site, and of course on the letters to the editor published by myself, Pipirr, Wilsontown and JJM relating to those homoeopathy papers.

I don't post under it so the casual lurker and reader of back threads can't trace me instantly.

All the BBC had to do was run a whois on the domain of my email address. I'd just be mildly surprised if they bothered. I'm sure I've heard letters read out with nicknames on that programme before.

It's possible my email software is sending it out without my realising it.

Rolfe.
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:
And one of the other good things is that it makes you go and look and see what documents are actually out there:

Like the note (not a transcript) of the meeting between Megrahi and MacAskill, published by the Scottish parliament and freely available on the internet.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/925/0085963.pdf

Page 13-15 of the pdf contain the note (turns out there were 5 people in attendance). Point 12 is the relevant one and clearly refers to the PTA only, not compassionate release.
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That's a great find - I wasn't aware that was in the public domain. I know they said they "published" everything, but I had assumed they had merely sent copies to the interested parties.

As you say, there were (and still are) a lot of myths out there. I made the cardinal error of assuming the opposition critics had the first clue what they were on about when they persisted with criticisms and accusations that were clearly untrue and they should have known were untrue. However, the government haven't been that successful in countering the accusations either.

This has also been pointed out on Robert Black's blog. That post says a lot more though, about the weirdness of the double decision. It all leads to, who told Megrahi he had to drop the appeal before the prisoner transfer could even be considered, and why was the timeline arranged so that he had to make this decision without knowing the outcome of the compassionate release application?

According to Matt Berkley, it would have been quite possible to keep the appeal open until any PTA decision was announced, then drop it if the decision was in favour of transfer. And that's even without a concurrent compassionate release application. Adding that in, there was no need to announce both decisions at the same time - it would have been quite reasonable to have announced the compassionate release first, and then allowed the PTA application to proceed.

Simple common sense indicates that the way to handle this was to announce either, compassionate release granted, there will therefore be no need to drop the appeal, or else, compassionate release denied, but prisoner transfer is granted providing outstanding appeals are dropped. (It would then have been only just to have allowed Megrahi to wait until he knew the Crown appeal to have the sentence increased was dropped before he dropped his own appeal against conviction.)

Instead, for no good reason, it seems to have been a case of, drop the appeal if you even want us to consider a prisoner transfer, and by the way we're not going to even hint to you whether compassionate release will be granted until you've done that.

The most peculiar procedure!

Jaggy Bunnet said:
If that was the case (and I agree it seems to fit a lot of the circumstances), why has Megrahi not come out and said so post release?

The note of meeting has been published, if he were to claim it to be inaccurate that would be dynamite and there is no obvious downside to him in doing so. Unless of course the Libyan government is also applying pressure to him not to do so.
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He did say he was pressurised to drop the appeal. The day after, through his solicitor who made a statement on his behalf. And personally, in a couple of interviews. And I think he was, when you look at the way the thing was handled. It's just a lot more subtle than Linklater was trying to imply.

Rolfe.
 
Thanks for helping with some clarification on the matter Rolfe and to JB for finding the notes that were released in the raft of documents released by the Scottish Govt subsequent to Megrahi's compassionate release. It was a seemingly inaccurate assertion made by Linklater, given the context of the meeting, that the transfer would not be considered while any continuing legal proceedings were outstanding.

I was also in the car yesterday when I listened to Any Answers, and on hearing some of the e-mails read out, noted inparticular the email that turned out to be yours Rolfe!

However, there are as Rolfe states above, a number of matters that remain somewhat disturbing.

Rolfe said:
...It all leads to, who told Megrahi he had to drop the appeal before the prisoner transfer could even be considered, and why was the timeline arranged so that he had to make this decision without knowing the outcome of the compassionate release application?

According to Matt Berkley, it would have been quite possible to keep the appeal open until any PTA decision was announced, then drop it if the decision was in favour of transfer. And that's even without a concurrent compassionate release application. Adding that in, there was no need to announce both decisions at the same time - it would have been quite reasonable to have announced the compassionate release first, and then allowed the PTA application to proceed.

Simple common sense indicates that the way to handle this was to announce either, compassionate release granted, there will therefore be no need to drop the appeal, or else, compassionate release denied, but prisoner transfer is granted providing outstanding appeals are dropped. (It would then have been only just to have allowed Megrahi to wait until he knew the Crown appeal to have the sentence increased was dropped before he dropped his own appeal against conviction.)

Instead, for no good reason, it seems to have been a case of, drop the appeal if you even want us to consider a prisoner transfer, and by the way we're not going to even hint to you whether compassionate release will be granted until you've done that.

The most peculiar procedure!
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I've been reading Matt Berkley's comments on Prof Black's blog and in addition to the matters pertaining to Mr MacAskill's visit to see Megrahi, in that it appears the options offered to Megrahi in relation to his transfer, release and his continuing the appeal were somewhat selective, and by my reading, possibly improper. I am however, a legal ignoramus, so I'm happy to be corrected on any issue I may have misconstrued here.

There was no stipulation stating that Mr Megrahi would have to drop his appeal in order for the PTA to be accepted. For, as the PTA had been made by the Libyan govt, it would at the discretion of the Justice secretary to either accept or decline this application, and before any further decision had been made in this matter by the Crown office, to then let it be known to Mr Megrahi that the Transfer application made by Libya had been accepted, and at this stage, representations would then be taken by the prisoner in relation to the transfer and the issue that any outstanding legal matters or appeal would need to be at an end for the transfer to proceed. At this point, then, it would be for the prisoner to determine whether to accept the transfer, remaining in custody in the country of transfer, and abandon any appeal proceedings, or refuse the transfer and continue with any legal issues outstanding.

However, there was also one further proviso to this determination being considered. The PTA agreement had a limit of 90 days from the date of application for it to be effective. This limit had expired on Mr MacAskill's visit to Megrahi. In addition, Mr MacAskill (and Mr Megrahi's legal team)would have been perfectly aware that the Crown themselves were appealing the sentence of Megrahi, insisting the sentence passed at Zeist was too lenient and urging the court to impose a longer period of recommended time before Megrahi would be eligible for parole. So, had Megrahi opted to accept the application made for PTA by Libya, and Mr MacAskill had intimated or confirmed his acceptence of such an application, the required time period for it to be effective had, by the time of the meeting with Mr Megrah at Greenock occurred, had already lapsed and would be insufficient in so much as the Crown would also still be required to abandon their own appeal against Megrahi. Therefore, on this basis, none of the criteria had been met in order to satisfy the conditions of the PTA.

It is also clearly not a decsion that it simply for Mr Megrahi's and his legal team alone. Indeed, far from it, and to infer this is the position, is wholly improper.
 
The Sunday Herald has caught on. The front-page headline is all about the pressure in this row switching to the USA, because (among other things) the documents the US senators are stridently demanding the Scottish government pony up, are in fact documents the US government itself has refused to allow to be published, in "a strongly worded letter".

However, that's a side-show. The interesting stuff is inside, on pages 19-21. I hope it's online.... [Rolfe goes to look.] Phew, I thought for a minute I was in for a bit of typing, but it's all there, a three-page special on one online page.

Lockerbie: The Missing Pieces

There are two main articles, by James Cusick and Tom Gordon, plus a side-bar giving potted biographies of the senators making all the fuss. The Cusick article has a lot about why it would be pretty embarrassing if Megrahi were found to be innocent.

James Cusick said:
Despite the formal authority of the Scottish police, the Megrahi case is regarded in Washington as FBI-led. If Megrahi went free it wasn’t just MacAskill’s departmental problem, it would have been regarded in DC as an FBI screw-up and would have raised questions about the ability of the US to work with other sovereign authorities in such terrorist hunts.

Although they had accepted, through the United Nations, responsibility for the attack, Libyan leaders continued to channel publicity that they had nothing to do with the bombing and had merely paid a high political price to ensure they were taken back into the international commercial community.

Commercial deals between the US and the UK, such as the $900 million deal struck in 2007 between BP and the Libyan National Oil Company, may have helped temper Libya’s anger. The son of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, Seif Gaddafi, stated that there were no plans to recover the $2.7 billion that Libya paid out in compensation to the victims’ families. But there were costs to Libya beyond this. Between the 1991 identification of Libya as the state responsible for the bombing and the imposition of sanctions that lasted until 1999, Libya lost ten of billions of dollars in international revenue. There is also the question of compensation for Megrahi’s years in jail.

International lawyers say the complexity of such a combined compensation case would not have merited it being given serious attention. But it would have been the UK Government potentially facing an angry adversary, because Scotland has a devolved parliament, not a sovereign government.

Libya, according to Foreign Office sources, would have expected something, but there is little diplomatic agreement on what that would have meant and the shape of the potential fall-out, financial or otherwise.

Taking Libya out of the frame would, of necessity, have put the case back to square one, meaning the original assumptions about who was responsible for the mass murder being revived. Given the current state of the Middle East, that would have been no easy matter because Syria and Iran would have been pointed at.
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The article then goes on to outline the case against the PFLP-GC, Syria and Iran, and a more detailed examination of the Gauci identification evidence. Cusick isn't quite right about the latter, because he seems to imply the evidence for a purchase on 7th December was good, which it wasn't, but he gets the basic idea.

Perhaps the most damning fall-out from the imminent appeal process, however, is the potential shredding of the evidence used to convict Megrahi and the unanswered questions about why they were admitted to court in the first place. Other uncomfortable questions centre on why wider investigations into the background of key witnesses did not take place on any scale that would have routinely been tested in a different legal arena. [....]

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is supposed to be the outcome of any legal process seeking justice. The appeal of Megrahi, had it gone ahead, suggests that Scottish justice fell short in the way it dealt with Lockerbie.

Megrahi sent back to Tripoli on “compassionate grounds” and still alive almost a year later, means that although the legal process for the Libyan remains complete, this does not automatically mean that justice has been delivered for those who lost their lives.
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I hope we see a lot more airing of this, becuse in my view this is far more important than any wild irrelevanies about BP and the PTA deal.

Cusick also notes something interesting that I hadn't considered. In his capacity as Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill will know the full details of the SCCRC findings, all 800 pages of it (while we lesser mortals have to make do with a 14-page press release). We've always suspected that the details of the two grounds for appeal that weren't referred to at all in the press release were the really embarrassing stuff.

Rolfe.
 
The second article is the one focussing on the withdrawal of the appeal, though the first article does touch on that point.

James Cusick said:
Of all the missing pieces in the jigsaw of information on the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath one of the most confusing is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal against his conviction for the greatest terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated over Scottish soil.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had looked at Megrahi’s conviction in 2001 on 270 counts of murder and after an effective four-year review had granted Megrahi leave to appeal against his conviction for the second time. The appeal was expected to be heard fairly soon after Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill visited Megrahi at Greenock prison in August 2009.

The Scottish Government had repeatedly branded the 2007 Prisoner Transfer *Agreement between the UK and Libya – brokered in Tripoli in May 2007 by the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald – as unconstitutional because it took no account of Scotland’s separate legal identity from the UK Government,

For the prisoner transfer agreement to go ahead Megrahi would have had to drop his appeal. But MacAskill rejected the PTA and opted instead to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, under the terms of which the appeal could have gone ahead as planned. Yet Megrahi opted to drop it. Why?

And if the PTA was regarded as a legal non-starter and a snub to authority because its first minister was not consulted by London, why did MacAskill raise it with Megrahi during his prison visit and point out its implications for the appeal?
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However, it is Tom Gordon who goes into the details. And in the process, re-opens the Linklater CT we thought we had laid to rest.

Tom Gordon said:
To many observers, it was the day Kenny MacAskill crossed a line. Before BP’s oil spill made it the focus for conspiracy theories, it was also the moment some felt ministers pressured a dying man to spare the blushes of the Scots legal system. [....]

On July 24, Megrahi made a separate application [from the Libyan application for prisoner transfer] for release on compassionate grounds. His prostate cancer had spread and was unresponsive to hormone treatment. A consultant urologist predicted his “demise before the end of the year”, he said. Five days later, the government told Megrahi the PTA meeting would happen on August 5. [....]

According to official notes of the meeting, MacAskill said he would be considering both applications for release “in parallel”. [....]

MacAskill stressed he could only grant a PTA transfer if there were no court proceedings ongoing – in other words, if Megrahi dropped his appeals against conviction and sentence. “Mr Megrahi confirmed he understood this point,” the note recorded. However, according to one of those close to events, Megrahi wrongly took this to mean that dropping his appeals was also a pre-condition of compassionate release. It wasn’t. “MacAskill said something stupid. He shouldn’t have mentioned the appeal at all. “[The two processes] were conflated. That’s ultimately what Megrahi took from it,” said the source.

A week later, Megrahi signalled he was dropping his appeals. His QC, Maggie Scott, told the High Court her client thought this would “assist in the early determination of these applications”. Note the “applications” plural. The move prompted claims Megrahi was pressured into giving up his appeals – and with it any hope of airing possible flaws in his trial. SNP MSP Christine Grahame has said she received an email from a whistleblower in MacAskill’s department saying Libya was told “in no uncertain terms that he [Megrahi] must drop his appeal or there would be no compassionate release”. A senior legal source told the Sunday Herald Megrahi was definitely under the false impression that abandoning his appeals would help secure compassionate release.
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It may be that Christine's source is suffering from the same confusion we believe Linklater is suffering from. On the other hand we can hardly dismiss this as "anti-SNP rhetoric". And whether it was actually as blatant as that, it's very arguable that was the subtext of what was being said.

I wonder what Tony Kelly was doing in all this. Was he not there to advise his client, and should have told him the true legal position?

Rolfe.
 
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Scotland tells Usan congressmen to go forth and multiply

Happy days.


"..KENNY MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, made it clear last night he would refuse to go to the United States to give evidence on his decision to free the Lockerbie bomber last year. ..."

From http://politics.caledonianmercury.com/2010/07/23/macaskill-wont-attend-senate-committee-hearing/

The government of Scotland does not answer to the USA for anything and quite rightly told the idiot committee (who don't apparently even know that Scotland is devolved) to go and get stuffed - in politer terms than strictly necessary.
 
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E.J.Armstrong said:
Happy days.


"..KENNY MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, made it clear last night he would refuse to go to the United States to give evidence on his decision to free the Lockerbie bomber last year. ..."

From http://politics.caledonianmercury.com/2010/07/23/macaskill-wont-attend-senate-committee-hearing/

The government of Scotland does not answer to the USA for anything and quite rightly told the idiot committee (who don't apparently even know that Scotland is devolved) to go and get stuffed - in politer terms than strictly necessary.
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I guess the dead Americans don't count.
 
To get this more back on track, this article (which seems to be from an unusually wel-informed US source) is pretty good.

David Macadam said:
So, is Megrahi is back in Libya, not because BP were dealing with Libya, or any deal with the British Government but because the Scottish legal profession were terrified that the whole mess, which had been their one and only throw on the world stage, would come unravelled and their bar would end up looking like a bunch of backwood hicks and amateurs? It also entirely denies anyone ever being able to test Al-Megrahi’s arguments under court conditions. Did they put their own legal political expediency over justice?
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As I said, if you're going to bash Scotland, bash for the right reasons. Like, running a show trial (at the behest of the USA, I have to say in some mitigation), convicting an innocent man, and then blocking the appeal that had a chance of getting a but closer to the truth.

Rolfe.
 
What a month, huh? For months the commentary was just trickling in and since July 4 it's been off-the-rails. My head's spinning trying to take it all in. The initial ill-advised US offensive is sputtering, and a wave of more informed commentary is washing back over it now. Yes, they say, maybe an investigation IS in order...

This latest thing about the Greenock conference (Megrahi's meeting with MacAskill) has been quite informative. If I gather correctly from the comments here and at Prof.Black's blog (thanks Jaggy Bunnet and Matt Berkley for the immensely helpful insights) it stands thus:

- Magnus Linklater was wrong, in substance mostly in saying "no question of your being released" was really "he can only grant a transfer if there are no court procedings ongoing." And it's not quite a "transcript." (link again)
- The purpose of this meeting, August 6 2009, was to take Megrahi's position on the Prisoner Transfer agreement. His submission is included, handwritten. I'll have to study that closer.
- This PTA could not have ACTUALLY been pursued, as it had expired.
- The PTA would require Megrahi to drop his appeal
- The PTA was never cited my MacAskill afyer-the-fact as a reason for release.
- MacAskill was advised by a Mr. George Burgess that he should consider both release/transfer options side-by-side
- MacAskill told Megrahi he was considering both options, would decide on both at the same time, and "could not" give any indication ahead of time which he would chose.
- This was on August 6, three days after Dr. Sikora (it seems) said 3 months, 4 days before Dr. Fraser's report to MacAskill officially endorsing it, on August 10.
- And two days after that Megrahi files to abandon his appeal, granted six days later, released two days later.

To explode one point, from the comments at The Lockerbie Case
Matt Berkley said:
iii) A statement to the prisoner with no obvious basis: “Mr MacAskill stressed that he could not give any indication of his likely decision”.

The basis of this assertion in the note of the prison visit is not clear. This issue is discussed in the Appendix below. There are no grounds in the treaty for saying a Minister could not give an indication.

Mr MacAskill does not make clear whether his statement is a legal, quasi-legal, procedural, or moral point.

A basis for the first three of those is not apparent. Morally, if a prisoner states a desire to return home as the reason why they might drop their appeal, it is not clear why it would be against the interests of justice for a Minister to indicate that doing so would not, or would not be likely to, achieve their aim.
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Excellent point. I first read that as "indication" of his choice for compassion or PTA. But in the PDF it's under point 1 (p. 14), which refers only to the PTA. Point 2 explains the parallel consideration of PTA and CR.

How many decisions could he have made regarding the transfer option? Given the details of it (I'm still hazy on these), could it have gone ahead? COULD he have said yes? Wasn't he presenting it to Megrahi as IF he could? Was it to meet the terms of this apparently plausible route that Megrahi surrendered his appeal? If not that, then what else could possess him to make such a move?

Point 12 is where Kenny says the appeal must be dropped if the transfer were to go ahead. It ends "Mr.MacAskill stressed that this was a decision for Mr.Al-Megrahi and his legal team alone." I don't have the quote handy,but isn't that about exactly how he explained why the appeal WAS eventually dropped? It was Megrahi's own decision, no reason offered as to WHY he'd make such a decision.

We're still missing something in the middle, or at least I am, but all the arrows point about the same way, don't they?
 
He didn't have to drop the appeal to get compassionate release.

Prisoner transfer wasn't going to happen, partly because the SNP was outraged over the deal in the desert (partly because it was a stitch-up for an oil deal, and partly because it usurped Scottish sovereignty), and partly because it ran counter to an agreement with the US relatives (that Tony Blair said didn't exist but Kenny MacAskill agreed after some inquiry did exist) that Megrahi should serve out his sentence in Scotland.

It rather looks from the notes of the meetings however, that Kenny was going through the motions on the PTA to the point where many people and particularly Megrahi may well have believed he was serious.

Nevertheless.
  • Kenny didn't have to consider both applications concurrently, he could have chosen to give his decision on compassionate release first to allow Megrahi to make an informed decision.
  • Megrahi didn't have to withdraw the appeal before Kenny could consider the PTA application. He could have held on until he knew that the application was going to be approved, and that the Crown was going to withdraw its appeal against sentence, before making his final decision.
As it is, Megrahi seems to have been manoeuvred into a corner where he was being pressed to make a decision while completely in the dark. Is this justice?

If we consider the PTA in isolation, as it would have applied if Megrahi hadn't been ill, it seems a pernicious piece of legislation. First, it's not the prisoner who applies to get back home, it's the home country which applies to have its citizen back. Second, this doesn't even require the consent of the prisoner - it was possible to send someone back against their will by this agreement.

Then, it requires no outstanding appeals. However, there were two appeals outstanding in this case. Megrahi's appeal against conviction, and a Crown appeal to have the sentence increased. Kenny's behaviour seems to imply that Megrahi was being told he had to withdraw his appeal without knowing if the government was minded to grant the prisoner transfer, or if the Crown had any intention of withdrawing its appeal.

This could potentially lead to a situation where he might have withdrawn his appeal in order to let the PTA application go ahead, only for the Crown then to refuse to withdraw its appeal, and/or the government to refuse the PTA application, leaving him still in jail, and facing the prospect of an increased sentence, with his perfectly good appeal which had had every prospect of success right up the Swanee.

This is simply an appalling arrangement, and has no place in a civilised justice system.

I try quite hard not to be too sympathetic to Megrahi, because I don't think a Libyan security officer in the 1980s was necessarily a sweetness and light sort of occupation. Nevertheless, that pathetic handwitten letter really is quite distressing. Even if he had been guilty as charged, he was doing his job at the time, he wasn't a crazed Mohammed Atta jihadist out to destroy the infidel, and the entire western world is currently cosying up to his employer who would have been giving the orders.

Stinks doesn't begin to cover it.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
If we consider the PTA in isolation, as it would have applied if Megrahi hadn't been ill, it seems a pernicious piece of legislation. First, it's not the prisoner who applies to get back home, it's the home country which applies to have its citizen back. Second, this doesn't even require the consent of the prisoner - it was possible to send someone back against their will by this agreement.

Then, it requires no outstanding appeals. However, there were two appeals outstanding in this case. Megrahi's appeal against conviction, and a Crown appeal to have the sentence increased. Kenny's behaviour seems to imply that Megrahi was being told he had to withdraw his appeal without knowing if the government was minded to grant the prisoner transfer, or if the Crown had any intention of withdrawing its appeal.

This could potentially lead to a situation where he might have withdrawn his appeal in order to let the PTA application go ahead, only for the Crown then to refuse to withdraw its appeal, and/or the government to refuse the PTA application, leaving him still in jail, and facing the prospect of an increased sentence, with his perfectly good appeal which had had every prospect of success right up the Swanee.

This is simply an appalling arrangement, and has no place in a civilised justice system.
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Hypothetical scenarios are interesting, as people were trying to make those happen. I Just came across this old mega-post from The Lockerbie Case

... a letter from several high-profile US senators, including Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, ... received on the day Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi formally dropped his appeal, the senators urged justice secretary Kenny MacAskill not to allow the bomber to return to Libya.
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Note the main push to insist he stay in jail comes AS he drops his appeal. To do so before might spook the man before he was quite in the trap. It was possible, as you say, he'd drop his appeal to go home, hoping for compassion as a backup, and both could be denied due to the heinousness of his crime, kept in jail with the crown's appeal proceeding and stiffening the sentence. (I'm hazy on the crown's appeal too).

So in denying these ludicrous demands, Mr.MacAskill did show some kind of decency that at least eased the physical and emotional suffering of Mr. Megrahi by letting him go home under the option he actually could use. Beyond that, I'm still not happy with the minister's approach here...
 
In short, Megrahi was kept in the dark and fed :rule10, so that he'd decide he might as well drop the appeal as he wasn't going to live to see it completed anyway.

And that wasn't true either, as it turns out. It would have been completed by now. Whether there was any hurrying along of the prognosis to achieve this, I really don't know.

Actually, reading the notes of the meeting, one thing becomes clearer. Last year there was confusion about the chemotherapy Megrahi received at Tripoli, and was this something extra he coudn't have had on the NHS. We were sort of given the impression that the NHS had done all it could. However, that wasn't the case.

The reports at the time said the cancer had become hormone resistant. Didn't say much about chemotherapy. However, Megrahi obviously knew the score, because he is extremely clear that he will need to start chemotherapy soon. He is asking to go back to Libya so that he can have the support of his family while he undergoes chemotherapy, as he knows that's tough even under the best of circumstances.

Since the doctors seem to be of the opinion that he isn't going to last the year even with the chemotherapy, and indeed prison isn't a great place for a chemotherapy patient, the medical people recommend the compassionate release. But he would have had that chemotherapy whether he went back to Libya or not.

He responded better than expected, probably partly because he was in a far far better environment than he would have been if he'd stayed, which was the basis of the three-month prognosis. So he's still here, and that's the huge scandal.

This spectacle of hounding a terminally ill man because he hasn't died yet is pretty sickening.

Rolfe.
 
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