Inquiry would clear up Megrahi muddle

Published on Thursday 17 September 2009 20:40

The news that the maker of Harris Tweed has removed all hints of Scottish branding because of US reaction to Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (your report, 14 September) indicates that the outcry provoked by the decision has now entered the realms of the irrational on both sides of the pond.

That many families of the victims of the Lockerbie outrage are distraught at a decision that denies them even the consolation of a sacrificial lamb is understandable. But the hysteria, as much in the UK as in the US, has masked the decision of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June 2007, following its three-year investigation, to refer the conviction to the High Court. It bears emphasising that its statement of referral extended to more than 800 pages with 13 volumes of appendices and that in its press release it described the investigation as "the longest, most expensive and singularly most complex" in its history. And it concluded " … based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".

Yet, with scant exceptions, comment in the UK media generally, although much less so in Scotland, has ignored the reference or anything that casts doubt on Megrahi's guilt and has focused rather on such matters as his reception back home and the ostensible realpolitik behind his release and repatriation. The assumption has been that, because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before his release while maintaining his innocence, the court cannot now consider the case.

I do not know whether the appeal would succeed. All I know is that the official body charged with investigating his case formed the view, after extensive consideration, that an innocent man may have been convicted.

As a solicitor whose firm has been in the vanguard in handling UK miscarriage of justice cases over the past 40 years, I believe justice cannot be done or be seen to be done unless there is a judicial trial.

To this end I have written to justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to question the circumstances in which Megrahi withdrew his appeal and I have said that, if indeed the court is functus officio (has discharged its duties], the Scottish Government ought, in the interests of the fair administration of justice in Scotland, to establish an independent public judicial inquiry to ensure that the case painstakingly prepared by the commission does not go by default but receives full, fair and dispassionate consideration.

BENEDICT BIRNBERG

Eliot Place

London SE3