Letter: Rough justice

The demand by US politicians that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi be extradited to the United States and tried again for his “crimes” is redolent of both ignorance and arrogance.

Not even the vengeful American judicial system, for all its tiresome exhibitionism and glacial pace, permits someone already convicted of a crime to be re-convicted of it.

Such a request, though it comes from the usual rabble-rousing suspects, is based on the absurd presumption that all other judicial systems are inferior to American “justice”.

It may be that not even Megrahi’s death will satisfy this vindictive nation, where the primitive biblical injunction of “an eye for an eye” is so woven into the judicial fabric.

Some may wish to follow the precedent of the medieval Catholic Church, which allowed Pope Stephen VII to exhume the body of his predecessor and put the corpse on trial.

(Dr) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews