The Brits are in a mess: They have freed the Lockerbie bomber for reasons that nobody truly, or reasonably, believes. And yet, maybe they know what they're doing.
True, something always seems terribly off about Gordon Brown's government. It is not just that so much of what they do has been incompetent, but that it looks squirrelly, shame-faced, and defensive. They're not just sneaks, but they keep getting caught.
In theory, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi has been freed from his life sentence in Scotland to return to Libya on compassionate grounds: He has cancer and will reportedly be dead in three months. This theory has not been helped by the fact that he is ambulatory, almost jauntily so, and has been giving interviews to almost anyone who asks. But even more to the point, governments, as everybody knows, seldom do the compassionate thing. They do the most politically viable and expedient thing. When they do something different than that, every sentient person's don't-ever-trust-a-politician radar goes off. In this instance, the Scottish government, full of sudden, abiding, compassion, and with hardly an objection from the British prime minister, decides to free one of terrorism's most dastardly evil-doers, even knowing that it would provoke a political firestorm large enough to threaten many careers.
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this story, which never did add up has the potential to bring down Gordon Brown and his government.
Also, it would seem that the Lockerbie fall guy, I mean bomber may not even be sick at all!
Perhaps the deal with BP and Libya is so much in the UK national interest that this story will just go away.
we shall see.
What you are suggesting is akin to Sarah Palin taking the blame for one of Obama's decisions.
But certainly, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
The appeal would've highlighted
One of the “secret” grounds of referral of the convicted Libyan national’s case back to the appeal court has been revealed to be the fact that crucial information in the possession of the CIA that is related to the timer issue was withheld from the Defense;
Another of the “secret” grounds of appeal has now been revealed to be the offer of a huge payment by the CIA to the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, a key witness of the prosecution, for identifying the Libyan Al-Megrahi as the one who bought clothes in his shop in Malta;
The Libyan-US double agent Abdul Majid Giaka had similarly been offered a huge amount for his testimony as a prosecution witness;
At least two forensic “experts” who were invited as witnesses by the Prosecution had links to intelligence agencies and were proven to be totally unreliable;
One of the directors of the “Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit” at the University of Glasgow which was set up at the beginning of the trial with the purpose of providing expert legal information to the interested public, was exposed by the British media as a member of British intelligence and had to step down.
The appeal would never have finished while he was alive.
So he had to drop the appeal to get compassionate release.
All those who profit from burying the truth sleep sounder knowing the appeal dies with him.
The reasons are understood by just about anyone who understands Scottish law, it's not complicated and standard practice for some years now in Scotland to release prisoners who are dying if they pose no further danger to the public.
There are many possible sub plots in this with the major one of course being that it avoids any appeal which would almost certainly have seen his release had he lived long enough and exposed the evidence that was withheld from the initial trial putting more than a few people in a rather uncomplimentary light but none the less it's standard practice under Scottish law now and nothing unusual or sudden. I realise this compassion might be alien to the U.S. viewer but do try to accept that there are cultural differences between nations.
Lastly do you know much about terminal cancer patients as his ambulatory state is not that unusual.