Gerald Warner: Absurd to conduct business with fruitcake Gaddafi

LOCKERBIE is a name that has passed into the collective memory of Scotland – and the wider world – with the same melancholy resonance as Glencoe or Culloden. The terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, in an era already inured to IRA atrocities but not yet exposed to the experience of the 11 September attacks on New York, was the worst outrage perpetrated on Scottish soil to date.

Yet there is no degree of trauma that can excuse our disastrous handling of subsequent events, a catalogue of misjudgements that has done nothing to enhance the reputation of Scottish justice. The fundamental problem does not relate to the allegations of a miscarriage of justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, although these have been many and forceful. The basic flaws in the whole post-Lockerbie shambles were rooted in our government's conduct long before Megrahi ever entered the dock.

The special provisions made to arrange for the sitting of a Scottish court in the Netherlands were a farce and a national humiliation. The Camp Zeist circus should never have been countenanced. It arose from the cynical manipulation of Britain by Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, one of the most notorious sponsors of terrorism in the world. For a decade he endured economic sanctions due to his refusal to extradite the Lockerbie suspects.

When the pain began to bite, Gaddafi entered into tortuous negotiations with the West, partly through the mediation of the inevitable Nelson Mandela. The outcome was an act of craven appeasement whereby a Scottish court was transported to the Netherlands, in defiance of the legal convention that suspects should be tried within the territory where the offence was committed. Since when did the accused and their sponsors dictate the venue of their trial? Megrahi's trial lasted nine months and involved four judges and 230 witnesses, at a cost to the taxpayer of 60 million; the subsequent appeal procedures cost a further 75m.

Whatever the question marks surrounding Megrahi, Gaddafi himself has an invincible claim to tenancy of the dock in a criminal court. His CV includes the financing of Black September, which perpetrated the Munich massacre; ultimate responsibility for the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984; and control of the terrorists who carried out the 1986 La Belle discotheque bombing in Berlin. As recently as August 2008, he was indicted by the government of Lebanon over the disappearance in 1978 of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a leader of the Lebanese Shia resistance. Gaddafi's active support of the IRA was notorious.

Now we are told the leopard has changed his spots. Up to a point, Lord Copper. In the wake of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Gaddafi announced that he had an active programme of weapons of mass destruction, but hastily added that he was willing to admit international inspectors into Libya to dismantle them. Apparently the gallant colonel did not fancy seeing his statue toppled and transferring his residence to a hole in the ground, la Saddam. His po-faced denunciations of al-Qaeda and quest for international acceptance also resulted from 35 years of his socialist dictatorship turning his economy into a basket case.

Gaddafi's modest title is "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Government by the Masses". Latterly, he has shown signs of regarding all this socialist revolutionary rhetoric as last season's style and has pursued more traditional grandeur. On 29 August, 2008, at a ceremony in Benghazi, Gaddafi proclaimed himself "King of Kings of Africa". He reinforced this pretension on 1 February this year with a coronation in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, where Haile Selassie once presided over an ancient monarchy.

Gaddafi's ambition is to put himself at the head of a United States of Africa, on the EU model. In some respects, frighteningly, he resembles Tony Blair. He has ambitions for Europe too. Wearing his other hat as self-proclaimed "Imam of the Muslims", he complacently observed in a speech televised by Al-Jazeera on 10 April, 2006: "There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without military conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."

Is this a fruitcake with whom we can do business, as optimistic commentators claim? That depends on the kind of business you want to do. It seems increasingly likely that some further transaction has been effected, since Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has withdrawn his second appeal process, opening the way to his release or transfer to Libya. To the very end, this legal circus, dominated by political negotiations, has maintained the high standard of absurdity it established from the outset.