The Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill has released AM on compassionate grounds and for his pains, is suffering. USA victims families are outraged, according to our media, and smelling the whiff of blood in the ocean; all sharks are steaming toward the story.
PanAm flight 103 exploded in the sky above Lockerbie at 7pm on 21st December 1988, a merry Christmas that some believe was a Lybian retaliation for the earlier American bombing of Col Ghadaffi's Tripoli. 270 people died that night I remember it well, I was not one of them, I was out celebrating with colleagues from work, eating drinking laughing all the good things about Christmas, while north in Lockerbie Hell fell to earth and the Christmas spirit was an inferno of aviation fuel. Driving home to Derby my radio began to tell of this horror though what I recall is that it was announced that a military plane had crashed onto a petrol service station in Lockerbie, proving as always, that when facts are unclear, the media will fill the void with invented speculation, without the bother of qualification.
I lack conviction about AM's culpability or his innocence, my memory is frail, and power politics have determined process (how many Scottish courts have there been in the Netherlands?) but I do know that listening to Kenny MacAskill, made me proud to be a Scot, and I shall write to him and say so. Strictly speaking AM has been shown mercy, not compassion, mercy is a decision not to extract the last letter of lawful and just punishment, compassion is the wider due of all who suffer, regardless of culpability. So to consider mercy. My thinking is that regardless of crime no prisoner (never mind one whose guilt is publicly questionable as per AM)'
should die in goal. If a prisoner is confirmed to be on his death-bed then he should be returned to his family for final days. Vengeance is a bitter emotion, a cancer that ultimately destroys those who succumb to it, anger is completely justified and (as Maya Angelou tells it so right) is like a fire whose burnt wake is duly cleansed. Mercy and anger, like the lion and the lamb, can co-exist. Lockerbie has been a dirty business and the stain blots our polity yet, confirming again the miserable product of chance. PamAm flight 103 was 25 minutes late in leaving Heathrow, had it left on time, Lockerbie would have been spared it's victims as the passengers and crew would have fallen into the sea. Eleven Scots died in Lockerbie, our losses are less than, but shared with America, we hold the jurisdiction and the right decision has been made. Surely we all recognise Shakespeare's sentiment in the Merchant of Venice? it should not be confined to the theatre...
"The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the plain beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes"
No "gentle rain from heaven" dropped on Lockerbie that night, but Kenny MacAskill is if not blessed, then on the right side of a difficult decision. Nothing can compensate for the loss of loved family and I know how I would feel vengeful if it had happened to me and that is why those directly involved are not called to jury service, and we must live in a messy place.
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