Allegations of oil deal to free Megrahi are easily disproved

Almost a year after his release by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, found guilty of planting the bomb which killed 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, is still alive.

This, combined with allegations of oil giant BP's involvement in pushing for a deal with the Libyan and UK governments to secure his release, are now fuelling calls for a public inquiry into the Scottish Government's decision.

The reasons for such calls are understandable. Megrahi continues to defy the medical prognosis which formed the basis of the case for his release by Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill last August - a state of affairs that has fuelled American anger and resentment. Separately, there are allegations of BP's involvement in the decision to release him.

But neither development justifies the case for an inquiry into the Scottish Government's decision to release Megrahi. The calls, first emanating from an American senate committee and now taken up by Conservative back-bench MP Daniel Kawczynski, appear innocent of the fact that Scotland has her own legal system.

Megrahi was tried and found guilty under Scots law, held in a Scottish prison and his prisoner status was at all times the responsibility of the Scottish administration. He was released, not as part of any prisoner transfer agreement mooted in discussions between the UK government and the Libyan authorities, but on compassionate grounds as he was suffering from terminal cancer.

From a distance, it may appear to American senators as if the Scottish legal system functions as a subsidiary of the English system. This is not the case. Scotland's separate legal system predates the 1707 Act of Union.

The conspiracy theories that Megrahi's release being part of a 2007 "deal in the desert", between former UK prime minister Tony Blair and the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, founders on this constitutional fact.

The argument that an inquiry is justified because of BP's alleged involvement is also without merit. There is no evidence of any negotiations or discussions between BP and the Scottish Government over Megrahi. And the assumption that discussions between the Westminster government and Libya were driven by oil considerations is suspect. That such discussions were initiated at all had arguably more to do with bringing a rogue state back into the international community. To cast it all now as a dastardly plot by the company to secure access to Libyan oil looks like an attempt to beat BP with any stick.

For these reasons there is little in our view to merit an inquiry. However, Megrahi's survival is undoubtedly an embarrassment and there is a case for a review of how the medical prognosis was arrived at. And there may well be a case for the justice minister to accept an invitation to appear before the US senate committee. It would be an opportunity to set Scotland's legal and constitutional record straight.