Zawaya

No, in the end, justice has not been done

By: Mohamed Mohamedou Khattat

Justice was indeed at work when, on January 31st, 2001 in a special neutral court in the Netherlands, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was handed down a life sentence to be served in Greenock jail, near to Glasgow.

Justice was at work once again when on March 14th, 2002 the appeal lodged by al-Megrahi against his sentence was overturned, with three judges having sentenced him to serve at least 27 years behind bars before a conditional release could be considered. But the spanner in the works was the incorporation into Scottish law of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2001, which weakened Scottish law and meant that the guilty man was allowed to lodge further appeals in 2004 and then in 2007 against his 27-year sentence. We know what happened next, with the five Bulgarian nurses and their long legal and diplomatic process which took place in Libya between 1999 and 2007, during which the Bulgarian nurses were allowed two hearings and came away with a death penalty, commuted to life imprisonment.

In reality, behind the scenes, Libya was negotiating the release of the Bulgarian nurses, with an extradition agreement reached with the United Kingdom over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, and an arms contract being signed with France.

At least, this is what was revealed at the time (in 2007) by Saïf al Islam, Colonel Gaddafi’s son, who today continues to state that the release of al-Megrahi was “always on the table during talks with the United Kingdom over oil and gas contracts.”

Sure, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is suffering from prostate cancer, and probably has no more than three months to live, so on a purely humanitarian level, it was an altruistic decision to let him die at home. But this “odour of backroom dealing”, as described by The Independent, means that at the end of the day, justice has not been done, and politics (the interests of British oil companies working in Libya) has once more had the upper hand over the application of the law.

And that is why I dare to add my voice to that of the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, when he says that “to see someone who has committed mass murder being given a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing.” Yes, I dare to say this because, in my eyes, and speaking as someone who has attended Syracuse University, which lost 36 of its students on that Pan Am jumbo jet destroyed in mid-air over the small Scottish village of Lockerbie on December 21st, 1988, the hero’s welcome accorded to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and the outpouring of joy which followed could have been avoided. The damage was already done. It was useless to twist the knife in the wound and cause more distress to the families of the 270 victims who died in the attack.