In a terse letter to Senator Robert Menendez, Mr. Salmond said: “Please do not ascribe to the Scottish government economic or commercial motives for this decision when there is no evidence whatsoever for such a claim.”
That’s telling them Alex, but why stop there? Scotland should use the Senate’s untimely and unwarranted re-opening of the Megrahi can of worms to re-examine the conviction of al-Megrahi given the widespread doubts of the legal soundness of the conviction.
After conducting a four-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) reported on 28 June 2007 that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi's case, and granted him a second appeal against conviction. That appeal was abandoned by al-Megrahi as a pre-requisite to his release on compassionate grounds.
The SCCRC also revealed that Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper whose identification of al-Megrahi was crucial to the prosecution, had been interviewed 17 times by Scottish and Maltese police during which he gave a series of inconclusive statements. In addition, a legal source said that there was evidence that leading questions had been put to Gauci. He was also paid $2 mn by the US Department of Justice for his inconclusive testimony.
It was clear from the SCCRC's report that the lack of reliability of Gauci's testimony as a key prosecution witness was the main reason for the referral of al-Megrahi's case back to the Appeal Court.
In a statement on 29 June 2007, Dr Hans Köchler, the UN-appointed international observer at the Lockerbie trial, said he shared the SCCRC's doubts about Gauci's credibility, expressed in the following extract:"there is no reasonable basis in the trial court's judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items (clothes that were found in the wreckage of the plane) from Mary's House (Gauci’s shop in Malta) took place on 7 December 1988."
So go on Alex, stop dithering and publish the SCCRC’s report.
And do your best to make sure David Cameron reads it, so he stops chanting in tune with America about how al-Megrahi should never have been released.
Then you can consider using your right as First Minister to recommend to Her Majesty to pardon al-Megrahi!
If you want to ready how Megrahi’s second appeal against conviction was shaping up, then read it all here: http://megrahimystory.net/
