Lockerbie release - Mercy is not a sign of weakness

SCOTTISH Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill yesterday decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a 57-year-old Libyan national and former intelligence agent who was sentenced to a 27-year term in 2001 for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, in which 270 people, the majority of them Americans, died.

The Libyan is terminally ill.

His release had been trenchantly opposed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. No doubt Mrs Clinton speaks with great conviction, and for a great many Americans, but whether she or her fellow Americans accept it or not every pronouncement America makes on these matters is tainted by that superpower’s recent and appalling record of human rights abuses at Guantanamo.