Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi released by Scots: the limits of compassion
Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi , who remains the only person ever convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, was released today by Scottish authorities for compassionate reasons. He is said to be suffering from advanced prostate cancer and to have only a few months to live, and Scottish law allows compassionate release under such circumstances.
In his statement justifying Al Megrahi’s release to return home to Libya, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill explains his decision:
In Scotland, we are a people who pride ourselves on our humanity…The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be a basis for losing sight of who we are, the values we seek to uphold, and the faith and beliefs by which we seek to live.
Mr Al Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion…But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days. Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available. Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown. Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs that 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 Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted in 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing, now terminally ill with prostate cancer, be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die.”
Shorter MacAskill: we’re showing what good people we are by being kind to the cruel.
Perhaps MacAskill has never heard of the old saying:
All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel
In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.
More colloquially translated: Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind.
MacAskill’s decision is but another example of the West’s tendency to elevate mercy over justice. The two are both desirable in a system of law, but in many parts of the West and especially Europe, the all-important balance has tilted towards the former over the latter. Although there is talk of shady oil deals with the Libyan government as underlying MacAskill’s decision, I will discount that aspect for now and take him at his word that it was his desire to show the world that the Scottish are a people of compassion that led to his decision.
If so, it was a very misguided desire, one that can only rebound negatively on our fight against Islamicist terrorists, letting them know once again (as if they needed reminders) that the West is a very weak horse indeed.
As one might expect, a great many of the families of victims of the Lockerbie crash are outraged—for them, this mercy is misplaced and justice has not been served:
Bert Ammerman, whose brother Tom was killed in Lockerbie, told The Associated Press, “It’s insane, it’s a travesty of justice and totally unacceptable.”
But a few applaud the decision, on grounds similar to those of MacAskill:
British Rev. John Mosey, whose daughter Helga, 19, died in the crash, told the AP, “It is right he should go home to die in dignity with his family. I believe it is our Christian duty to show mercy.”
I wonder why the mercy of allowing Al Megrahi to live in the first place, feeding and clothing him in a prison facility where he was visited by wife and children, allowing him to defend himself and even to appeal his conviction, and treating his cancer for years with the best Western medicine could offer until it finally became more aggressive and hormone resistant and therefore terminal, is not enough mercy for the Reverend Mosey. It is for me—and I leave the rest of the compassion and mercy to the deity.
I am pleased to report that the Obama administration is on the side of justice in this matter. Although the rhetoric is weaker then I would have liked, Obama stated that he is opposed to Al Megrahi’s release and calls it “a mistake.” However, in another example of Obama’s inability to influence international policy, we learn that all his efforts—to influence the Scottish government not to release Al Megrahi, as well as to pressure the Libyan government not to allow him a hero’s welcome and to instead place him under house arrest—have been ignored.
Al Megrahi, of course, has consistently proclaimed his innocence. But his conviction was based on the fact that, in addition to having been identified as the person purchasing clothing and an umbrella exactly like the ones in the suitcase in which the bomb was placed:
At the time of the bombing, Mr. Megrahi was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, the state carrier. But an F.B.I. investigation concluded that his job was a cover for his work as an intelligence officer for the Libyan intelligence service, which Mr. Megrahi denied but which the court accepted in finding him guilty. Prosecution evidence showed he had used false passports on trips between Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and two destinations linked to the bombing, Malta and Zurich, where the timing device for the Flight 103 bomb was bought.
The Libyan people disagree that Al Megrahi was guilty; no surprise there. Thousands have welcomed Al Megrahi at the Tripoli airport with heartfelt joy and celebration, in a manner exactly the opposite of Obama’s request. And as for the example set by the Scottish government of its compassion, the Libyans are deeply skeptical:
Many are blaming the Scottish authorities for not taking care of Megrahi’s health while in prison and speculate that he was left, on purpose, to die of his cancer…Libyans are now convinced that the Megrahi case could be viewed as a premeditated murder on the part of the Scottish prison authorities.
So much for Western compassion. As for Western justice, the common Libyan assumption is that Al Megrahi’s release was not on the grounds of compassion, but on the grounds of innocence and miscarriage of justice:
Megrahi’s imprisonment was a political one and had nothing to do with the Lockerbie but what has been done has already been done,” remarked Imad Taib. “If they consider themselves humans, they should have considered the situation from the beginning, but what we discovered is that, they are just pretenders.”
Apparently, some of the compassion and the justice got lost in translation.
[ADDENDUM: Yaacov Ben Moshe has more on “savage compassion” at Breath of the Beast.]
One wonders if Mr. Al-Megrahi will celebrate his release and return to his homeland by strapping on some Semtex and visiting an Israeli pizza parlor in his final hours?
My first reaction when I heard this news was “Oh, why not?” Naive of me! It didn’t occur to me that the Libyans would make hay of this — and not only the Libyans.
Yet again we see that in the war against terror, against mass murderers, taking prisoners is not productive.
Cruel to the kind.
Mercy does not exist without a foundation of justice. The mercy of the victor toward the vanquished is a wise and beautiful thing. But the undefeated always regard mercy as weakness. That does not just apply to evil people, or to Arabs, or the barbaric. That is human nature. Premature mercy encourages the recipient to battle on, to the sorrow of all.
Scottish official’s actions bring the phrase “too dumb to live” to mind.
Release your proven and unrepentant enemies and they will come back to kill more of you, and you–having behaved so stupidly and suicidally–will deserve it. The only problem is that the government officials who made this decision will not likely be the ones to suffer the consequences.
These are certainly not the Scotch-Irish ancestors I know. Whenever there’s a sense of entitlement then you know there’s been a miscarriage of mercy
My husband is an airline pilot and I don’t see this as serving justice OR making the skies safer. The ‘mercy’ shown should be to the suffering of the victims’ families.
If the West is in an ongoing war with radical Islam, then this is a battle victory for terrorist-sponsoring states like Libya. (Libya admitted responsibility for the bombing in 2003.) My Scottish ancestors are spinning in their graves. Whatever happened to Scots Wha’ Hae? They used to understand that the choice was either the ‘gory bed’ or victory.
It doesn’t make a particle of sense.
“Elevation of mercy over justice” is a phrase to remember. Belongs in the class of “Triumph of hope over reality”.
But speaking medically, it is curious that this relatively young man has been declared “terminally ill with prostate cancer” without any fact reported to support the declaration. He did not board the plane on a stretcher; far from it. Nothing has indicated he actually has metastatic disease. Males today in America can survive years, even ten or more, with prostate cancer metastatic to the skeleton (which is the very predominant site of metastases). Michael Milken, the junk bond originator, was declared incurable at least 10 years ago.
Left off: Milken is quite alive today.
O would or I had seen the day
That treason thus would sell us
My old grey heid had lain in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace
But pith and power till my last hour
I’ll mak’ this declaration
We are bought and sold for English gold
Such a parcel o’ rogues in a nation.
— Robert Burns, in protest of the Act of Union 1707 which united the English and Scottish parliaments, after the Scottish members had been bought off with large pensions.
Today the Scots are bought off with the mutli-culti PC gold of European self-regard.
Compassion for Mordor…
“If they consider themselves humans, they should have considered the situation from the beginning, but what we discovered is that, they are just pretenders.”
I will not be lectured on humanity but that scum. It’s like getting tips on human rights from Germans.
This joker should have been hanged long since. Failing that, I’d be perfectly happy to let him die in prison.
Idiot Judge
Wakes into new world
Every day
What, no apology from Obama? Well, that’s any improvement.
In Walker Percy’s wonderful book The Thanatos Syndrome (which 1988 predicted, among other things, the drugging of children to improve their school performance and federal death panels) he has a character (who is a watcher in a tower) tell the “I”of the story that where all that liberal good-heartedness and compassion lead is to the gas chamber.
I wish there were things I bought from Scotland so I could then boycott it but alas, I care not for the wee dram.
The Libyans are masters at recognizing compassion. Even a few can vouch for that.
Even a few Bulgarian nurses…
Tom: Here’s the story of what happened with Al Megrahi’s cancer:
Most [prostate] cancers can be kept under control with hormone treatment even if they cannot be cured. But hormone sensitivity can change over time and al-Megrahi’s tumour appears to be no longer responding to treatment, which may explain why his condition has worsened in recent months.
The doctors also make it clear that the prediction of three months to live is merely a prediction. He could live a shorter time and he could live a good deal longer.
Nothing a cruise missle couldn’t fix….
He could live a shorter time and he could live a good deal longer.
Not if I get my hands on him.
Occam’s Beard: I guess I should have written “or he could live a good deal longer.”
At least they didn’t send him to Bermuda for an all expenses paid vacation like Obama did with the Gitmo guys.
Neo, same comment applies. /g
Neo-
Thanks for the link. But oncologically, the UK story still makes no sense. “It seems no longer to be responding to treatment.” I take this to mean his PSA is climbing.
But no info as to Stage of disease, other than “incurable at time of diagnosis in 2008”. (These are NHS urologists, presumably) Perhaps they didn’t feel like putting out for the esteemed Libyan.
Anyhow, we do not know he was/is Stage IV. And long survival as a Stage IV patient remains possible. Justice would be served if he had aggressive invasion of the urinary bladder (rare), or if his vertebral metastases would cause paraplegia by spinal cord compression (in the US, without Obamacare, a treatable medical emergency, but in Libya?).
Tom, how about fracture at C2, my own prescription?
Which can be sped along with an application of Hemp!
He deserved to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in the first place. And there are no stones left in Scotland. I feel contempt for them.
This kind of “compassion” stuff isn’t particularly new, nor are we immune to it.
Mark Twain was not only a story teller, but a reporter and a very astute observer of humanity in his time.
So, note this from “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876)…
In the book, the killer, Injun Joe, was Tom’s living nightmare. Near the end, Joe gets trapped in a cave and starves to death.
Directly from the book, after Joe’s burial:
This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing–the petition to the Governor for Injun Joe’s pardon. The petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the Governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks.
The more things change…
–
Great quote, Paul Gordon! It’s good to remember that the madness of our time is not without parallel.
The guy only has 3 months to live.
Poor Abdel, no doubt this signal of compassion will garner a new and profound respect for the Scots from Abdel’s compatriots. “The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be a basis for losing sight…”; After all, let by-gones be by-gones, whats several hundred victims lost lives in the far distant past, when the man has already served well over, five years? Kumbaya…
Tech,
I personally know 2 people that were given 3 months years ago.
but they had american health care and are still alive
After all, there are worse things than murdering 270 people at several thousand feet above the ocean, like waterboarding the mastermind of 9-11; Western Europeans are teaching us valuable lessons about our misplaced priorities everyday…
technology slice says the guy only has three months to live. He should spend it where he was. The 270 people on that flight, and those who knew and loved them, would probably agree with that. I do. Western civilization, with all its “compassion”, has become self destructive.
I suppose Al Queida will now recruit men in the early stages of prostate cancer. They get short sentences.
Anyone else getting tired of being laughed at by these people besides me?
Paul Gordon takes the “comment cake” for this one! Great one, Paul, proving once again the more things seem to change the more they stay the same.
Go back to the barbary pirates affair; the Euros had been putting up with their crap for centuries. What’s new is decorating their submission with the pc fancy talk.
As for us, such is the sickness of the times that I hope Dear Ardel lives to thumb his nose in our direction for many more years. It took the Hostage Crisis to get rid of Carter. Hopefully this turd will help us get rid of é˜bama.
Bravo Paul!
br549, my thoughts exactly… Nothing like a terminal diagnosis to remove any qualms you might have about strapping on and blowing up.
I cannot believe that anti-release statements have not explicitly pointed out that “dying at home” is not something this man (using the term with utmost looseness and curlage of lip) permitted to his victims.
And where is the limit of mercy? As Christians, we’re called to forgiveness – yes, without limit, regardless of our ability (or inability!) to achieve a true sense of forgiveness. So I can say that while I, imperfect as I am, can’t truly say that I feel forgiveness in my heart for this creature, I can say that I believe God has forgiven him, somehow. Nowhere does it follow that I have to show “mercy” to the point of doing anything besides refraining from “an eye for an eye.”
(And even that is quesionable. I liked Heinlein’s death penalty apologetic in Starship Troopers, upon the hanging of the soldier who went AWOL and killed a baby girl: either he is [still] insane, in which case society must protect itself from him with capital punishment the most effective way to do so, or he is now sane or will return one day to sanity, in which case, how could he possibly live with himself, knowing what he did? Of course, these positions rely on KNOWING the guilt of the person. But I’m perfectly comfortable with the reasoning. And in the case of Megrahi, where I gather evidence of his guilt is powerful but circumstantial, I’m perfectly comfortable with allowing him to live out his days in prison rather than killing him outright. Seems like PLENTY of mercy to me.)
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I always thought when dealing with ill and suffering animals “compassion” was putting them down.
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So, at what time in the next few days do i expect to see an American invasion force rolling up the beach and a missile targetting some sheep ?
Its just that i’d like to move the car first so it doesnt get crushed by a tank, thanks
This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent memory. Megrahi deserved to die in prison, cancer or not. Actually, he deserved to get pushed out of an airplane from 31,000 feet, but, civilized fools that we are, we don’t do that anymore. Justice can be tempered with mercy, but justice first.
Waltj, You’d probably get done for kidnapping and murder and then commit suicide because you couldnt live with the fact you killed an innocent man
At the end of the day, Scotland’s right, USA’s wrong, you cant change the truth in that. You’ll forget about it all the next time a donut passes your eyes.
May i remind you as well, your country funded that murdering bunch of Rebuplican terrorist scum – the IRA. 3000 UK civilians you killed, thats a fact.
And your Hilary Clinton is proud of her role in the Northern Ireland peace protest, the good friday agreement, the release of all those murdering scum from the Jails in Belfast.
So dont start on Scotland, compassion is something we beleive in, unlike the USA’s double standards
Megrahi is innocent
Innocent? Hardly. Megrahi was a Libyan intelligence officer who plotted to blow an airliner full of innocents out of the sky. He is a murderer as much as Jeffrey Dahmer or Jack the Ripper. The original Scottish court which convicted Megrahi made this quite clear. Prison was the proper place for him to spend the remainder of his days. And no, I won’t forget. I don’t even like doughnuts.
Not quite, he was allowed to appeal his conviction in 2007 following a Scottish judicial panel ruling that he may have suffered a “miscarriage of justice.”
But he’s dropped it in order to die.
In case you forget –
Iran Air Flight 655, also known as IR655, was a civilian airliner shot down by US missiles on Sunday July 3, 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran—Iraq War. The aircraft, an Airbus A300B2 operated by Iran Air as IR655, was flying from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai, UAE, when it was destroyed by the U.S. Navy’s guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 66 children.
Maybe its related, i dont know
The simple fact at the end of the day – compassion is enshrined in our Scottish law system, we cant change that, whoever the individual is, its what happens, you get released if youve got less than 3 months to live. Prisons are not the place for people to die and neither should the prison staff have to take on that emotional responsibility
If you took the ‘eye for an eye’ approach, then the whole world would be blind.
What, all we all of a sudden giving out FREE Lunches? Since when??? Under what premise? Did this guy learn his lesson? I doubt he would have changed his actions if he knew he would have gone to jail. These people don’t care, but only to KILL America. They hate us…helllloooooo!!! Wake up people.
“May i remind you as well, your country funded that murdering bunch of Rebuplican terrorist scum – the IRA. 3000 UK civilians you killed, thats a fact”.
Ah, now it comes out. You blame us for your own internal strife. While some private American citizens may have supported the IRA, the US government never did. That’s also a fact.
Let me state up front that I have no Irish, English, or Scottish ancestors, so I have no dog in that fight. I also have no use for the IRA and its allies. They’re a bunch of no-good commie bastards who deserve every bullet an SAS trooper ever sent in their direction. Bobby Sands is rotting in hell, as far as I’m concerned. But rubbing the Catholics’ noses in the Battle of the Boyne every year isn’t going to win a lot of friends. You already outnumber them in the North and dominate them economically. Is it really necessary that you continue to humiliate them as well? And the UDL and its friends weren’t any better than their Republican counterparts. They just targeted their killings a little better. But they were thugs as much as the Provos were.
Yes, Iran Air 655 was indeed shot down by the USS Vincennes. For which the US government apologized and paid restitution. While it still resulted in a lot of dead innocents, it was a victim of the “fog of war”. Could the US Navy have behaved differently to prevent the mistaken shoot-down of a civilian airliner. Very likely, yes. But a tragic mistake is not the same thing as planting a bomb in the cargo hold of a similar plane.
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Calumn,
Groundless accusations (funding of IRA may have come from misguided Irish Americans but not from the government), feeble-minded moral equivalencies (accidental destruction of Iranian Airliner for which official apologies were offered vs intentional murder of 270 human beings, celebrated in the streets of Tripoli) do not make you and Scotland right.
They only prove yet again that compassion has replaced patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels.
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I’m glad they danced and partied in Tripoli. Let it be a teaching moment for the compassion-addicts among us.
I think the “y” must be missing on “Calumn’s” keyboard…
Neo-
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to get in on this earlier – but I had an exceptionally long and trying day yesterday working extra hard to make sure that I could contribute to the cause of those people trading in cars that got 18 MPG for ones that got 23 MPG. I was helping to save the planet.
My comment on Obama is this – while the rhetoric may have been there it was merely a PR op – a ceremonial rattling of the saber (or magic wand in BO’s case). If anyone in the administration was actually outraged and wanted to do something about it they could have insisted that if the Scots were going to release him it needed to be to us since he still has outstanding warrants in this country. Actually I believe we have a treaty with the UK that they would have had to ignore if we had, in fact, insisted.
Jamie Says:
“And where is the limit of mercy? As Christians, we’re called to forgiveness – yes, without limit, regardless of our ability (or inability!) to achieve a true sense of forgiveness.”
I guess two points.
1) If he didn’t admit guilt then he did not ask for forgiveness.
2) He murdered many of the parties he wronged; so he they can not forgive him (ie, they’re dead and gone). This judge has no right to forgive as he was not harmed by the man.
# Yaacov ben Moshe Says:
“They only prove yet again that compassion has replaced patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels.”
In a lot of ways his kind of talk is simply a new kind of nationalism…. and/or the same base impulses have been re-channeled into these new themes (like this ‘compasion’ thing and international law…. which is always used to bash certain disliked parties).
huxley – Steeleye Span recorded that poem of Burns’s. Quite good.
To the end of the discussion. What would be the evidence that Calumn is actually listening rather than arguing in his head as he reads?
Exactly my point, Thomass, compassion is invoked in self serving and arbitrary cases as a trump card- who could be against compassion? Need something (to release a terrorist) for a reason you to which you can’t admit (oil deals, perhaps)? Want to negate an argument you can’t refute? Can’t build consensus any other way? Invoke compassion.
The theory is that not many will stand up and declare themselves to be compassionless and you can bully the rest into ignoring the ones who will…
Huxley, Assistant Village Idiot- I have an updated version of the poem in my post that neo-neocon linked-
http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2009/08/such-parcel-of-rogues-in-nation.html
…’Our honor is soiled by Libyan Oil’-

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!…
Just looked up forgiveness – theological substrain.
Forgiveness is recommended from the “victim” BUT ONLY if the transgressor admits guilt for the act requiring forgiveness.
In other words, forgiveness is a two-way street. This act cannot be validated unless BOTH parties willing contribute to its action.
“So I can say that while I, imperfect as I am, can’t truly say that I feel forgiveness in my heart for this creature, I can say that I believe God has forgiven him, somehow.”
Why? Christians believe God forgives us only when we repent and ask for forgiveness. I don’t see any of that in this case.
Calumn: Allowing an appeal is standard operating procedure. It certainly doesn’t mean the appeal would be successful. It simply means there were irregularities in the first trial that the court thinks are worth looking at. In this country, prisoners are granted appeals with great regularity and lose them with nearly as great regularity.
As far as “eye for an eye” goes—it is completely inappropriate here, since al Megrahi was not executed. Imprisonment for life does not equal 200-plus deaths, when last I checked. I am merely asking that he serve out his sentence.
Furthermore, you are applying a common misconception about the origins of the phrase and the concept “eye for an eye.” See this [emphasis mine]:
The law of equivalency was an attempt to limit the extent of a punishment and to discourage cruelty. The principle of this legislation is one of equivalency; that is to say, the punishment should correspond to the crime and should be limited to the one involved in the injury (Deut. 19:18-21).
This law was a rejection of family feuds and the spirit of revenge that led the injured party to uncontrolled attacks against the culprit and the members of his or her family (cf. Gen. 4:23). The punishment was required to fit the crime, a principle still used in modern jurisprudence…
[T]he formulation “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” etc., seems to have been a technical phrase used to express the idea of equivalency, leaving the court to determine the nature and extent of the equivalence.
“Whatever he has done must be done to him” (Lev. 24:19, NIV) is used to indicate that the culprit should get what he deserves (cf. Judges 15:6-8, 11). The restitution could be monetary or in kind, as indicated in Leviticus 24:18: “Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution–life for life.” Obviously, in this case “life for life” does not mean that the individual who killed the animal was to be killed. The law provided the legislative foundation to establish proper equivalence in specific cases.
off topic — “all wee-weed up”? This is our PRESIDENT speaking? How did this happen?
Yaacov ben Moshe: Nicely done! I hadn’t looked up Neo’s link to your site. I was just riffing off Amy’s mention of Burns’ “Scots Wha Hae.” I’m a MacLennan on my mother’s side.
I do know and love Steeleye Span’s Parcel of Rogues. Now if we can only work out a way to recast “Cam Ye O’er Frae France” with Obama as King George I.
See http://www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/music/camyeoer.html for a great unriddling that song.
This Chicago Tribune editorial is good: Scotland’s shame
As for me, I think President Wee Wee should try to get back on the good side of the Scots like Calumn by apologizing for America’s past sins, (committed mostly by conservative white men long before Wee Wee’s time) such as making those Catholic-Protestant feuds in Ireland even worse, causing Libya to justifiably hate us (I mean, who wouldn’t, really?)
Etc.
Aha. I had a feeling a post on the wee-wee topic might be in the offing.
Forgiveness is recommended from the “victim” BUT ONLY if the transgressor admits guilt for the act requiring forgiveness.
That’s one understanding of forgiveness, but it’s not the Christian understanding.
Christ forgave his executioners while they were crucifying him and it was clear the executioners admitted no guilt. “…for they know not what they do.”
States, not being human beings, can neither go to Heaven nor to Hell, although some come damn close to the latter I have to admit. Christ’s example does not apply to them, their governors, their magistrates. Their function is to preserve order and to that end, say believers, were ordained of God. In the mediaeval practice of the “kiss of peace” the condemned and the executioner forgave one another, and then the executioner carried out his duty, thereby satisfying the requirements of society and the obligations of religion.
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Thnx Huxley,
I might start first on “All the Hard Times of Olde England” – or come to that, “All Around My Hat” Hamas is mighty fond of the green ribbon.
Even though he is dying,he should not be trusted and he should still be monitored.
Dear People
Let’s just keep it simple. The man is innocent.
I believe him and let me tell you why.
At the moment when he was convicted, I saw the look on his face (which I am quite sure you can find somewhere on the net), the look in his eyes, the body language, was of a man being done a great wrong. No-one could have put that on. A blind man could see that he is innocent.
linda: Your comment is typical of the type of thinking that’s been running rampant these days: the elevation of one’s feelings above logic and fact. You seem to have no understanding of evil, and you put way too much faith in your own ability to read the expression on a person’s face. No doubt Al Megrahi does think he’s been done a great wrong merely by being convicted; unrepentant terrorists (and criminals as well) tend to think that way.
His crocodile tears do not move me, nor should they. If a court of law overturned the verdict and the evidence to do so was compelling, that might change my mind about his guilt. But that’s not what happened. Do you understand how law works at all? The man did not receive a pardon from MacAskill, who said that he considers Al Megrahi guilty.
You remind me of the jurors in the OJ Simpson trial, or perhaps those women who fall in love with charismatic serial murderers and marry them in prison, protesting their innocence all the way. Until the man gets out, marries them, and murders them.