Questions About the Lockerbie Case

I hadn’t been followng it closely, knew there was some doubt among intelligence agencies, didn’t know the spokesman for the families of U.K. victims, for instance, believes the wrong man, wrong terrorist entity, was convicted and that a number of non-crackpot intelligence sources agree.

See what you think of this report from invaluable British Middle East correspondent Tom Gross.

*update: I should make extra clear (though its all there inthe link) that doubts about the case in no way diminish the disgustingness of the “welcome home” celebration in Libya–nor the evidence of a corrupt deal behind the release. While the convicted Libyan still maintains his innocence, the crowds welcoming him home seem not to care whether he was a mass murderer or not. And if the British/Scottish government believe they convicted the right man, the release is still shameful whether they did or not..

As you can read in the link, the point that Gross makes (and which has been picked up as he notes, by a number of British papers) is that a new evidentiary appeal of the case was coming up and that may have been a motive for the deal: the chance that doubts about whether they let the real killers get away would be raised again by the appeal. A precondition for the release seems to have been the dropping of the appeal hearing which held open the possibility of deeply embarassing the justice system there.