Not in the saga of the Lockerbie mass murderer released into the loving arms of his countrymen and coreligionists. According to the neoconservatives, Bush’s deft diplomacy had won Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi over to the West, but you know better. By welcoming Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi home as a hero, Libyans and their leaders were showing their true hue to the West. Cry baby victims and their leaders demand sensitivity to their plight; the Arab world gives them a macho display of antagonism. Frankly, I can respect the latter more than the demands from the West that Gaddafi be more like Oprah.
Al-Megrahi was convicted of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, and killing 270 people—259 people on the plane and another 11 who died on the ground.
The Boeing 747 blew up at 31,000ft, approximately 38 minutes after taking off from London’s Heathrow airport bound for JFK in New York.
Large parts of the aircraft fell on Lockerbie, devastating parts of the Scottish borders town and setting in train the UK’s biggest mass murder inquiry.
The contemptible parties in this fracas are the Scottish authorities, responsible for releasing the man on compassionate grounds citing the certitude of their moral values and Al-Megrahi’s impending death from cancer. A befitting description for the values of Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, are the words deployed by family members: “Perfidious, repulsive and sickening”—that pretty much sums up the quality of Scottish justice.
