Lockerbie bomber to be released

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was jailed for life in 2001 after being found guilty of the 1988 atrocity in which an aircraft was blown up and 270 people killed, is to be released from prison on compassionate grounds after courts heard that he has three months to live.

Acid Rabbi probably ought to apologise for the gross stereotyping in this image. But we're not going to.

The US government has opposed his release every step of the way, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally urging the Scottish Justice Secretary to keep him in jail. However, it seems that those politicians who choose to remain in Scotland rather than hoofing it down to the bright lights of London have backbones of their own, are prepared to stand up to the Americans and make their own decisions about what happens in their own nation, unlike Blair (born in Edinburgh) and Brown (Glasgow) who are more than happy to let them walk all over us and demand extradition of British citizens virtually on a whim. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, "Our interest is justice, and our interest is the commitment that we made to the families that we would find the perpetrator of this terrorism act...He was brought to trial. He had a fair trial. He was convicted. He's serving his time. And we think he should stay in jail," adding that there are "compelling reasons" why he should do so.

"Mr al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion," says Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, "They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them. But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days." Mr. MasAskill, it seems, is that rare thing - a politician who understands that revenge has no place in justice and that in showing compassion and mercy we make ourselves better human beings than those who do not. One of the reasons we invaded Iraq - assuming it was not in fact because we need their oil - was to rid that nation's people of a tyrant who carried out public execution on a vast scale. By hanging Saddam, and then showing the horrific footage on television, in the eyes of many Iraqis we made ourselves look little better than him - perhaps England and the USA could learn a valuable lesson from the Scottish and realise that if the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are to accept democracy, we democrats need show compassion in our ways so that they're aware of democracy's advantages. Right now, all they can see is that one load of vicious, torturing tyrants have been replaced by another load of vicious, torturing tyrants that differ from the old ones only in that they're foreign.

Mr. MacAskill added, "Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs the we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people - no matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated. For these reasons and these reasons alone, it is my decision that Mr Mr Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, convicted in 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing, now terminally ill with prostate cancer, be released on compassionate grounds and be allowed to return to Libya to die." Libyan Megrahi will be flown by a specially chartered plane to Tripoli today, following a decision that he cannot remain in Scotland for security reasons.

Now - isn't it a pity that Glasgow-born Asperger's Syndrome sufferer Gary McKinnon was living in England when he naively hacked NASA and Pentagon computers while looking for information on UFOs and later e-mailed them alerting them to the weak spots in their security? Had his case have been dealt with by the Scottish government and legal system, he might not now been facing the extradition that doctors fear is likely to lead to his suicide.

"Secret Inquests" will not go ahead

Justice Secretary Jack Straw (pictured right - never noticed how much he looks like Ivor Cutler before...) has stated that so-called secret inquests - which would give the Home Secretary the right to name a specially selected coroner to run inquests into Governmental or police actions without the presence of a jury for reasons deemed to be of national security or not in the public's interest. The statement comes shortly after Mr. Straw also suggested that some of the laws - widely considered to be draconian - created by Labour in the wake of the World Trade Centre attacks could be withdrawn. The plans, outlined in Clause 68 of the 2008 Counter Terrorism Bill, would have given ministers the power to keep evidence in inquiries such as that following the death of Charles Jean de Menezes, shot several times with hollow point bullets by police on the London Underground, secret. The Menezes case has shown serious shortfallings in the police's actions that day. The Clause was created in an attempt to end the stalemate which arose during the investigation into the death of Azelle Rodney who was shot by plice in April 2005. In that investigation, coroner Andrew Walker (pictured left) said that he would not be able to continue with the case due to the large number of redactions - crossed out sections of text - in police statements, which are thought to have related to evidence gathered by the use of phone taps and/or bugs. However, Alan Beith, Liberal Democrat MP for Berwick Upon Tweed and chairman of the Commons Justice Committee, said that he was "not comfortable with a situation where a politician is deciding there shouldn't be a jury in a particular inquest," adding that the proposal was dangerous despite Bridget Prentice's - Labour MP for Lewisham and a Minister of Justice - claims that it would affect a mere handful of cases every year.

Daniel Machover, the Rodney family's solicitor, said that "These proposals mean that ministers and those responsible for intelligence gathering will never be held properly to account for the validity of their tactics." Helen Shaw, co-director of Inquest - a group which campaigns for people who have died during legal custody - said that "The public will find it difficult to have confidence that these coroner-only inquests, with key evidence being suppressed, can investigate contentious deaths involving state agents independently."

However, announcing that the proposals would be dropped, Mr. Straw said that they had not got the cross party support required to make them law. A joint committee on human rights made up of MPs and peers had previously advised that the proposals be scrapped, saying that inquests - especially those in which citizens had been killed at the hands of the state - must be "transparent."