And another thing…

SIPPING water during last Thursday’s Scottish Politician of the Year Awards ceremony in Edinburgh (I was driving), there was some tension in the run-up to the announcement of the winner of the night’s main award. In fact I had already written (but not posted) a Tweet announcing: “Mahatmakaskill named Scottish Politician of the Year 2009 – even Nicola would have been an improvement!”

In the event, the very decent and well-liked John Swinney snatched the title. I’m sure MacAskill was philosophical about it; after all, if a “Higher Power” ordained it, there’s nothing he could do about it.

But as the case for the three nominees was being summarised from the stage, and footage of the Justice Minister announcing the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on the basis that he only had three months to live was shown, the Lord Foulkes MSP (Labour, Lothians) shouted from a sedentary position: “He’s still alive!”

Aye, there’s the rub.

Who knows how much longer the mass murderer has to live? The media are playing a rather sick game here, regularly reporting on the fact that Al-Megrahi hasn’t – yet – shuffled off this mortal coil to have his inevitable difficult conversation with that Higher Power. Now, I oppose capital punishment, and I do not want Al-Megrahi or anyone else to die (well, no-one that you have ever heard of, anyway). And neither does MacAskill.Yet Al-Megrahi’s continuing survival threatens the minister with embarrassment at best and the end of his career in government at worst.

I’m not doubting that the bomber is terminally ill. And neither do I believe he’s entered himself in the 2010 Tripoli Marathon. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear news any day that he’s succumbed to his illness.

But he shouldn’t have been released; he should have been allowed to die in prison – a very minor punishment, given the nature of his crime. MacAskill has assuaged his own conscience – of that I have no doubt. But the continued survival of Al-Megrahi must surely be the source of unpleasant dreams for Kenny MacAskill.

How Al-Megrahi appears in Kenny MacAskill's nightmares

Incidentally, the host of the event, the BBC’s Colin Mackay, came up with the best line of the night: “2009 was the Year of Homecoming, both here and in Libya.” It did sound rather familiar, mind you.

WELL, of course it wasn’t — what a bloody stupid question!

The conspiracy theories go something like this: senior members of the government (the PM and Mandelson) give a nod and a wink to various members of the Gaddafi clan that they’ll guarantee Al-Megrahi’s release provided some lucrative Libyan contracts come in the UK’s direction. Then Brown phones Salmond and/or MacAskill and gives them their orders. In response, the First Minister and his justice minister tug their forelocks and tell Gordon and Peter: “Of course, boss — anything you say.”

Now, who among those of you who know anything at all about Scottish politics can tell me what’s wrong with this scenario?

Got it in one: however low one’s opinion is of the SNP and the administration they run from Edinburgh, Salmond and his gang are as likely to take orders from Labour as Guido is to take instructions from Sunny Hundal.

And on this point alone, all the silly season speculation surely founders. It is based on the notion that the SNP and MacAskill specifically, are taking a shed load of abuse in order to protect their bitterest political opponents.

But maybe I’m wrong. In which case: come on, Kenny, fess up! Did you genuinely take this decision on your own or are you merely doing what you Labour Party masters tell you?

I think we should be told.

SCOTLAND’S national flag has been seen on TV screens across the world today, being enthusiastically waved by those giving an inevitable hero’s welcome to the Lockerbie mass murderer.

Surely even the most enthusiastic supporter of the SNP minority government will feel uneasy about this?

WOULD Thomas Hamilton, who murdered 16 children and their teacher in in a primary school in Dunblane 13 years ago, have been released from jail on compassionate grounds had he (a) lived to be convicted and (b) developed terminal cancer?

Most people, including the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, would, I hope, dismiss such a notion. And yet, in December 1988, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi not only murdered 17 children under the age of 16, but also 253 others. In cold blood. Without mercy. Without compassion. Without humanity.

And tonight he is flying home to the bosom of his loving and (I assume) forgiving family in Libya.

Al-Megrahi has, we are told, just three months to live. Not long, you might think. And yet for two of his victims, that is more than a lifetime: Jonathan Thomas of Southfield, Michigan, and Brittany Williams of Crown Point, New York, were each just two months old when Al-Megrahi’s task of 21 December 1988 was completed successfully with the explosion in mid-air of Pan Am Flight 103 above a previously unheard-of Scottish town.

Some may argue that the lives of child murder victims are no more precious than those of any others, and I simply use Al-Megrahi’s child victims to illustrate a point: why was he considered for compassionate release when others whose crimes were, arguably, less (in quantative terms only; not in relation to the devastation caused to victims’ families) would almost certainly not be?

MacAskill told reporters today: “I can only base my decision on the medical advice I have before me.” That was a false statement. If it were true, then he would not have been asked to make a decision in the first place. If the “only” basis for a decision was Al-Megrahi’s medical condition, then his release was inevitable, since the medical evidence seems to be incontrovertible. But MacAskill was asked to make a decision, a decision that had to be based on a lot more than “the medical advice I have before me.”

He had to take into account whether or not justice would be served by the mass murderer’s release. Before he became an MSP and then justice minister in the SNP Government, MacAskill was a defence solicitor. His liberal instincts which allow him to sympathise with the perpetrators, rather than the victims of crime, have not let him down today.

I can’t shake the feeling that not far beneath the surface of this debate has been an assumption — and if not an assumption, then certainly a suspicion — that Al-Megrahi is innocent of the crime of which he was convicted eight years ago. Yet even if this were the case, MacAskill’s decision was still the wrong one. The deal (unofficially) offered to the terrorist by the Scottish Government was that in order to qualify for compassionate release, he had to drop his existing appeal against his conviction. There is a widespread and near unanimous view among the families of the victims of Lockerbie that had the appeal gone ahead, it would have unearthed previously unseen evidence that could have helped answer some of the many unanswered questions surrounding the tragedy.

Thanks to MacAskill’s intervention, that will now no longer happen. In his embarrassing and unsuccessful attempts to look and sound statesmanlike today, MacAskill tried to claim “humanity” as a peculiarly Scottish characteristic. But it is too late for him to try to claim the moral high ground. This decision was made not by a minister representing the Scottish nation, but by a lawyer representing the minority Scottish Government.

His decision today was wrong on the grounds of justice and wrong on the grounds of humanity. But as long as Mr MacAskill can reassure himself that it was the right decision medically, then I’m sure he’ll be able to sleep as soundly tonight as Al-Megrahi will when he arrives home after a long but safe and comfortable flight.

JACK Straw is right to say that the main point of prison should be punishment.

Of course, part of the reason behind prison sentences is rehabilitation – given the levels of recidivism today, we’ve a long way to go on that score. But prison is also – I would say primarily – about punishment. 

If the level of re-offending is the basis for claims that “prison doesn’t work”, then I guess that’s true from that perspective. But in at least one very real sense, prison does work: because while you’re behind bars, you’re not selling drugs (at least not to those of us outside), you’re not stealing cars, you’re not assaulting people and you’re not breaking into other people’s homes.

I recently heard Scotland’s justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, bemoaning the fact that we had too many people in prison in Scotland and that this was unjustified because crime levels were currently low.

“Er… Kenny… there’s something you ought to know…”

There’s a reason that crime levels go down when you put more criminals behind bars. What a pity that Scotland’s justice minister (a lawyer, as if you needed to ask) doesn’t get it.

KENNY MacAskill really ought to know better. His party has had to issue a humiliating apology after putting the justice minister and two Central Scotland Police officers on one of their leaflets in the Glasgow East campaign. Electoral rules explicitly forbid the use of officers on party election literature if they can be identified.

Now, you would have thought that the SNP justice minister, who is also a lawyer, would have known that, wouldn’t you?

An SNP spokeswoman said the party had issued an apology to the officers involved through the Scottish Police Federation and said that the leaflets had now been withdrawn. Maybe the much-heralded 1000* SNP activists expected to take part in the campaign today can be put on shredding duties.

Of course, MacAskill has form on using the police for political ends.

* That’s the SNP calculation. So about a dozen in real money