Megrahi mistake?

04/09/2009

Top QC questions why second appeal wasn't brought forward

One of Britain’s best-known barristers says the furore over the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi could have been avoided by the Scottish Government.

Leading QC Michael Mansfield – who previously represented the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four - told the Big Issue the Scottish Government was right to release al-Megrahi, but said there were still unanswered legal questions over its handling by the SNP government.

He said: “Of course there is room for compassion within the justice system. I’m sympathetic, the guy has prostrate cancer and he’s about to die, so I don’t have a problem with letting him out. What I have problem with is that there was a way of doing it that would have avoided all the pitfalls.”

Mansfield, who sat in on al-Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002 and was mooted as part of his defence team, said he is left wondering why the Scottish Government did not bring forward al-Megrahi’s second appeal which had been pending since 2006 and base their decision on its outcome. “That way the court decides whether the conviction is reliable or not,” he explained.

“The court either upholds the conviction, in which case the Scottish Government could have transferred him as a convicted prisoner to a prison in Libya and satisfied the Americans, or the court would have quashed the conviction and he went home a free man.” “This isn’t being reported, and I keep asking myself ‘have I missed something here’?”

Megrahi, 57, who is terminally ill, was freed last week by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. He had been given a life sentence for killing 270 people in the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing and had served eight years of his sentence. He has always maintained his innocence.

Al-Megrahi’s first appeal was turned down in 2002 and he lodged a second appeal in 2004. That was due to begin two years later but delays have meant that by the time of his release this month, no appeal had been heard.