Lockerbie Bomber released

[Rhyfelwyr]

The subject of this thread is probably the first political thing I've heard everyone in RL give an opinion on of late, normally they don't take an interest in politics. The attitude from what I see is pretty mixed, although few people feel to strongly about it over here, since he's going to die anyway.

Technically, I suppose if he was convicted of such a crime then he shoudln't be released. However, from what I've seen on the news (yes not exactly conclusive, but I wasn't even born when Lockerbie happened), the evidence against Megrahi was pretty dubious and apparently one guy was paid millions to give evidence against him and now lives in a mansion in Australia.

And so with that taken into consideration, I'm not too bothered about him being released, in fact I'm glad that he will get to go back to his homeland before he dies, he has just wasted most of his life in a prison just across the river from where I live for something that he maybe didn't even do.

[Tribesman]

That's a big if, why would this case go back to court, any new information?

This would have gone back to court because from the very day the verdict was delivered its reliablity was widely challenged.
The new information is the statements of the key witnessess being withdrawn and the forensic evidence being challenged by the very people who presented it in the first place.
The scottish commisions report on questionable issues relating to the conviction ran to 800 pages , which is why they rejected the Crowns attempts to block the appeal.

[scotchedpommes]

...the evidence against Megrahi was pretty dubious and apparently one guy was paid millions to give evidence against him and now lives in a mansion in Australia.

And so with that taken into consideration, I'm not too bothered about him being released, in fact I'm glad that he will get to go back to his homeland before he dies, he has just wasted most of his life in a prison just across the river from where I live for something that he maybe didn't even do.

I agree, for the most part. There's more to this though, obviously. [Aside from effects on business deals.] But he would be dead before any appeal cleared his name, though, so his decision to drop it in the deal to go home makes sense.

As for MacAskill? I don't believe he thought Megrahi was guilty, but other than that, he's most likely helped to maul the party. He didn't do himself any favours on Newsnight Scotland when all he seemingly wanted to do was hammer home points about lack of Government power. Can see where he was coming from, but nobody's going to take that from this episode.

On a positive note, from the strength of the negative coverage coming from the right-wing in the US, it looks like it wouldn't take much more for them to include us in some mock miniature axis of evil.