R.I.P. Justice (20 Aug 2009)

'I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!'
-Barry Goldwater.

Just after 7pm on Wednesday 21st December 1988, Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747-121 named ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’, exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The plane was carrying 243 passengers and 16 crew.

The initial explosion ripped a 20-inch hole in the plane’s fuselage, and the plane rapidly disintegrated. The nose section was torn off, exposing those inside to rapid depressurisation, resulting in tornado like winds, lethal flying debris, and a sudden drop in air pressure that would cause the gasses in people’s bodies to expand to four times its normal volume and make their lungs swell and collapse. Victims who were sucked from the plane were exposed to outside temperatures of –46oC.

Events happened so rapidly that no emergency procedures were started, and no distress signal was made.

Within 3 seconds of the explosion, the nose section, the fuselage and one of the engines were falling separately. The fuselage continued to break up as it fell. The 31,000-foot (9,400 m) plummet to the earth lasted about two minutes. The debris of the plane, the flaming aviation fuel, and the bodies of the victims rained down on and around Lockerbie.

A 196ft (60m) wing section, carrying 200,000 lb (91, 000 kg) of aviation fuel landed on Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie. The impact caused a seismic event that was recorded as measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale. The wing, several houses, and two families of Lockerbie residents disappeared without trace in the resulting crater.

Counting the eleven people who died in Lockerbie the death toll was 270, and included people from 21 countries.

On 31 January 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer was convicted of 270 counts of murder for his part in the atrocity. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and told he would serve at least 27 years.

On 20 August 2009, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, announced that Megrahi was to be released from prison on compassionate grounds, as he is in the final stages of prostate cancer and is expected to live no longer than a further three months. Within hours, Megrahi was on a plane bound for Libya.

Megrahi had been in custody for a total of ten and a half years. That amounts to about a fortnight of imprisonment for each of the 270 victims. And that, we are supposed to accept, is justice.

That is what the sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, grandparents and friends of the victims must be content with. The only person convicted of the most horrendous terrorist atrocity ever in this country is now a free man, after serving an embarrassingly inadequate sentence.

So what that he is dying. That does not, in any way, absolve him from paying for his crime as long as possible. To allow him to die a free man, to grant him the privilege of returning to his homeland where he will be welcomed as a hero, and will live his last days in the comfort of his friends and family, is an insult to the memories of the 270 victims.

Kenny MacAskill has spat upon their graves. He has slapped the face of each and every person still alive that lost loved ones that day.

On 20 August 2009, justice was murdered in Scotland.