What is compassion?

Well, William, that's as good an explanation of grace as I've read and is something all Christians should understand. It's what we're supposed to believe and it's how we're supposed to act. The complication, of course, arises when we ask if it is possible to be both just and merciful, can we prevent injustice in showing grace? That answer too seems to be a peculiarly Christian one.

I see this point fairly easily; that by being prepared to offer this guy some grace in his last few days, it sends a good message. He won't likely be committing his crime again. But I do think these cases need to be the exception rather than the rule, for the same exact reason.

Sorry, William, you cant dismiss the huge question marks over Megrahi's conviction as not really the moral point. Whether a convicted murderer should be released on compassionate grounds or not, isnt the question here. Many have been released. This is actually about a particular convicted murderer, who many believe to be an innocent man, being released to die at home.

While we are remembering the victims' families, let us also remember that many of those families believe him to be innocent, that evidence was witheld at the trial, that the shopkeepers evidence was highly suspect (he saw Megrahi for the first time 10 years after Lockerbie), that the attrocity was threatened beforehand by Iran in retaliation for the US downing an Iranian passenger jet (blood will rain from the sky), that high ranking US officials had boarded the plane and were taken off it at Heathrow, etc...

Why did Blair make an extradition treaty with Libya without consulting the Scottish Parliament? (It was so obviously something which was done with Megrahi in mind.)

Should Obama and Clinton be allowed to bully the Scottish Parliament in the way they are?

If we are going to discuss merely whether we should show mercy to convicted murderers or not, Megrahi should not have been put forward as a case in point.

"The consequence of offering him grace is that he will soon die, probably surrounded by his family, knowing that the community he attacked so murderously has chosen to show him compassion and mercy in his final few days."

But would it be "the community" showing him compassion and mercy, or simply the government representing that community - often in spite of the views of many or most people in that community? This idea that the government can justifiably represent the views of a people is something I find quite objectionable. From what I have read it would seem that many British people are not in favour of Megrahi's release.

I think it is a complicated case, and I agree with romejellybean that this is not a good example due to doubts about Megrahi's guilt. Because this case is so emotive, and is generating strong transatlantic reactions, we feel drawn into taking sides. I have not been following this case in detail, and since I believe that acts of compassion have to be understood within their context, I do not feel qualified to jump to an easy conclusion. The fact that I am a Christian does not compel me to jump on either bandwagon, as I do not believe in the fundamentalist practice of reducing the Christian faith to nothing more than a spiritualised moral philosophy with predictable conclusions - backed up with the appropriate biblical proof texts - in any given situation (in other words, a dead religion without the wisdom of God).

Furthermore, and I regret sounding cynical, but if Megrahi is released would it really be an act of compassion, or an act of political expediency vis-a-vis our relations with Libya?

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thron-ed monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthron-ed in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

John

If he's being released because he's not likely to commit his crime again, it's not mercy/grace.

RJB

If he's innocent then there has been a miscarriage of justice and his release would not be an example of mercy/grace.

LSV

If his release is political expediency then it is not mercy/grace.


Of course, in political terms, desisions like this are complicated, but I get the impression that William was contrasting certain Christians expressing a 'he deserves it' attitude with the Christian concept of 'grace'.

Mr. Crawley:

This is not compassion...I am in the background, where the Lockerbie Bomber shouldn't be released from prison.....

=Dennis Junior=

Regardless of what he has done, he is a human being. Compassionate release is not "forgiveness", because (like god, funny enough) a justice system is not in a position to forgive wrongs that one person has done to another. So a compassionate release isn't even "mercy" as such - the purposes of a justice system can really only be reduced (discuss!) to rehabilitation, prevention of re-offence (which to an extent is covered by the first point, but not wholly, obviously), and deterrence. You could perhaps add that there is a "message" that the justice system sends out by the types of sentences it imposes, and the actions it takes with regard to prisoners.

Clearly the first 3 are not at issue here, so the issue is one of the "message". Personally, I think the message of respect for life, appreciation that prisoners, whatever they have done, are human, have feelings, have families etc, is an important one, and I feel this man should indeed be allowed to see out his final days in Libya.

Is it not hypocritical to hear the Americans demanding that this man stay in prison for his crime (if he did it, some suggest it was not him) when the US Administration encouraged ever so loudly the people of Northern Ireland to accept the Good Friday agreement, even though many convicted murderers were released here what just after 2 years?

Also how many suspected members of the PIRA were kept in the States by US courts as they "couldn't get a fair trial in the UK" even when they were suspected of committing terrible crimes over here.

Sorry and although I don't wish to appear unkind, but what goes around comes around.

As a Christian I personally believe that he should be at least sent home to a prision in Lybia to let his family have easy access to him in his final days. He is dying and as a christian I want to show grace as God has shown us grace.

BUT

This is only the opinion of one person. The decision will no doubt be made with the mind set of what is the best for someones political career and not of how God wants His creation to act.

Cynical old me

PS... this is the first time I have contributed to this blog after I long time enjoying reading all the comments.

So, Helio, first question of many!

From where will mercy come?

Andrewbft

Welcome!
Just to get you used to the less intellectual punters on here, you do of course realise that your name is anagram of 'bent dwarf'?

You might get a rough time of it on here. There are some on here who have shown much hatred towards small people. Why, I dont know. Seemingly the Bible says something about them as being evil or unnatural.

I dont know if you are happy about being verticly challenged (V.C.), if you feel that its actually sinful to be V.C.?

If so, there are groups in our churches that will help you (stretching techniques, platform shoes etc...) You'll still be a dwarf, but no one will know.

As regards the gay thing, we couldnt find anything in the Bible about that, so you're okay there.

P.S. Kenny McAskill might be the first politician in a while who is going to do the right thing in releasing Megrahi, and it may cost him dearly. I think he is courageous.

Mr. Bean!

That was rather naughty. Please understand that I shall spend sometime today working on an anagram of your name. If successful I will publish it here, later!

:-)

Hi emperor wort / roomer twerp / tremor or pew / wet mop error

Rome jelly bean has at least 2147 anagrams. I'm sure you'll come up with something apt and funny.

I see romejellybean knows how to google anagrams.......

where would you be without google...

Strangely enough, Graham Veale is Megrahe Leav.

Peter! You should know better to ask me a silly question like that! We act in a certain way; we attach the label "mercy" to it. Job done. No need to get more funky than that.

What can you do with "Heliopolitan"?

Where would we be without mercy, in the hands of the lunatics.


Breaking news Christian gene found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCzbNkyXO50

Yes Helio, I know you're armed with Mr. Avery's sticky labels labelling set (and a printer), but you have neither told me what mercy is nor where it comes from. It's just that I'd like to be able to recognise a situation worthy of one of you lables when I saw it. Then we could both go sticky, wicky mwad.

RJB

Tremor or pew? I'm a Presbyterian, pew it is!

And my first attempt at your name, jelly Rome bean!

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is to be freed:

https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8197370.stm

RJB

I present to you,

joy. beer. all men.

McAskill's speech -

He has heavily criticised Uk government for making prisoner transfer agreement with Libya and not discussing it with Scottish government - whom it was directly going to effect.

He has made clear that it is on the grounds of compassion (not prisoner transfer agreement) that Megrahi is to be released. He has mentioned Christianity and Megrahi facing a higher power - designed to appeal to religious Americans.

And appeased Scottish police and judicial system by commending them for their great work. Reiterating time and again that Megrahi was guilty. Other 'broader' questions are not for the Scottish judiciary or Government.

Pewter
Lol, very close to the truth!!
Got a few for Helio.

inhale lip too / Lit Alien Pooh / A He Lion Pilot. (The last one sounds a bit saucy!)

Better not get overly saucy rjb your post might get deleted. (sorry bbc moderators but you did remove one of my posts because it made a joke that everyone masturbates)

Helio - some slightly confused thinking in your post # 8.

Neither mercy nor compassion have any necessary connection with forgiveness - I do not see why you linked them.

An individual might forgive someone totally for an offence but offer them no mercy from the consequences believing that the needs of society require the exacting of full retribution; equally a person might feel it appropriate spare an offender the full rigour of the law (maybe to benefit his dependants) while the burden of hurt they bear leaves them quite unable to forgive him.

Mercy, clemency, pleas of mitigation, however, are not peripheral to a justice system: they lie at its core and they enter into the thinking of every judge passing sentence. Brian would surely agree that Shakespeare knew his legal system (Bacon was after all a barrister) and the seasoning of justice with mercy is daily practice in the courts of every civilised society. The circumstances of an offender often elicit mercy from a judge - not for any of the purposes you list but simply because it is appropriate.

There is little that can be said beyond the obvious. In America nearly universal outrage over release of a mass murderer after only eight years in prison, a man whose crime was the result of participation in state terrorism attacking the civilized world in which the incident deliberately killed 270 non combatants including 189 Americans. In Britain self righteous justification on what it sees as its "compassionate humanity." In Libya a hero's welcome upon the assassin's return, proof that there is still much popular sentiment there supporting militant Islam's war against the rest of the world, a war in which no human life has any value.

It may come as a shock and surprise to many Americans that its misplaced trust in Europe in general and the UK in partular as an ally sharing common values and interests has been betrayed once again but not as a surprise to me. In Britain, a nation that has abased itself far beyond the pale, its government demonstrates again its unbounded depravity not merely by proving as always that it does not have the mettle to stand up to any aggression to its independence and defend its self aggrandizing pronouncements of its high moral principles but by not even recoginzing that this is the essence of its view of the world and the actions it takes or fails to take. That this is so has been true since the first world war devastated Europe. The weaseling out of Minister Darling by disavowing any and all responsibility and the Scottish Minister's rationalization of "humanitarian compassion" has the same hollow ring as Chamberlain's claim 71 years ago of having brought Britain "Peace in our time" by having laid Britan prostrate to Nazi military aggression and then deluding himself that he'd appeased the unappeasable mass murderers. Likewise, much of Britain would have laid itself open to takeover by the USSR during the cold war as demonstrated time and again by mass protests against any and actions its government took to cooperate with America's ultimate challenge to tryanny, "liberty or death" and now to any meaningful challenge to Islamic terrorism in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and everywhere else including its own backyard...Lockerbee Scotland for example.

If Britain doesn't think it hasn't spit in the eye of the American people once again, it had better think twice. It can only do this so many times before it will no longer be able to delude itself that it has a special relationship with the United States of America. There will likely be no real reprisals or consequences for what is just one more incident in a long string of its own crimes of betrayal...this time. That will not always be the result in the future. Eventually Americans will see that the UK is not its ally but is in fact just one more of its enemies, the most dangerous kind of all, the one who masquerades as a friend.

#26

Amen.

The Cabinet Secretary for Justice does not speak for me.
Mr. MacAskill's approach to crime and punishment can be summed up in four words.

More carrot, less stick.

Victims of crime are habitually ignored. Now, it seems, victims of terrorism are to be similarly ignored. Appeasement trumps justice.

"Victims of terrorism are to be similarly ignored."

Too true Scotch git. The US and British Governments have refused to release documents which it is believed would cast serious doubts over Megrahi's conviction. The victims' families have tried everything to get these documents released, but have met a brick wall at every turn.

The expected posturing by both governments is now in overdrive, Scotland gets it in the neck, while British and US companies will now quietly line their pockets in Libya now that the door is open again.

The families have been ignored for years, the US government prefering to pay the Maltese shopkeeper millions to frame an innocent man, instead of bringing Iran's Ayatollah and Abu Nidal to court.

Why have so many victims' families refused to accept the guilty verdict? Why have so many families stated that they are happy to see Megrahi return home?

Because they know justice has not been done and Britain and the US are guilty of a cover up. To listen to these politicians weeping on behalf of the families is nauseating. Want to do something for the families? - Release the documents!!

"An individual might forgive someone totally for an offence but offer them no mercy from the consequences believing that the needs of society require the exacting of full retribution"

I think that goes to show that mercy and utilitarinaism are incompatible. And I'm absolutely sure that if we are talking about the needs of society then we are not talking about retribution.

GV

Et tu Brite'!

Graham

"I think that goes to show that mercy and utilitarianism are incompatible" - I can not see how it shows anything of the sort.

"I'm absolutely sure that if we are talking about the needs of society then we are not talking about retribution" - retribution means 'just punishment' - are you saying society should not seek to impose penalties proportionate to the offence?

Marcus - LOVE you...

"Mercy and utilitarianism are incompatible"

Thankfully I'm not a utilitarian. I'm an egoist, which - despite what you might think - is perfectly compatible with mercy. :-) I'm a merciful egoist.

And of course, convicted, yes convicted, bombers have been released under the terms of the Good Friday (or Belfast) agreement. As usual, when this happened in Northern Ireland, no one batted an eyelid. Personally, I can't see the difference.

P.S. i would imagine this is why the response on Talkback was so hostile from NI callers William.

Britain has demonstrated that it places no more value on American lives than al Qaeda does. It also does not live up to its commitments. As part of the arrangement where the US gave up the right to try and incarcerate this terrorist the UK gave a guarantee that if convicted he'd serve at least a 28 year sentence in prison. He didn't serve even a third of that. I've always felt the differences between Britain and the US were irreconcilable ever since the American revolution owing to the basic differences in the nature of their societies. Centuries of trying to paper over that cravass hasn't worked and never will. Not until there is a basic change in the very nature of Britain. I don't expect that will ever happen.

The UK has now become a conspirator after the fact in the cold blooded murder of 189 Americans. It is clearly an act of war. The UK is just lucky I'm not the President of the United States. I'd have issued a stern warning before the release and by now all relations would have been severed.

MAII

I think we are ALL fortunate that you are not President. But if you ever are, would you please order the release of the documents regarding the break in at PanAm at Heathrow on the morning of the bombing.

Otherwise the families of the other 81 victims are going to continue to suspect that you (and the British Government) are hiding something.

Your country is actually deliriously happy that Megrahi has gone because now the likelihood of the truth coming out, has gone with him.

rjb, the US is not on trial here, the UK and the Arab world are and both are clearly guilty. The reaction in the Arab culture demonstrates that in part it still widely supports terrorism and there are states like Libya which have only given up terrorism because the economic penalities outweigh achieving the political objetives it still seeks. The UK revealed that it remains and likely always will be unwilling to stand up to aggression and defend civilization. Its culture, people, and government have as their first instinct to surrender to it. It also demonstrated that it will abuse and insult the People of the United States at every opportunity in any and every way possible to demonstrate its contempt for them. One day it will pay a dire penalty for its attitude. There may always be a Britain but one day it may be ruled by Islamic terrorists instead of those who rationalize surrender to them as compassion.

MAII

The Scottish government released Megrahi, not the UK government. (One of the points which has been made repeatedly over here is that for those people who didnt realise there WAS a Scottish Government, now they know there is. Obviously, when making that point, they didnt know about you!!)

The fact that this country - after being attacked by Islamic fundamentalists (Glasgow) could still make a decision based on compassion rather than on hatred, says much about this nation and whether it is "civilised" or not.

If the Arab world removed its money from the US economy, the US would be on its backside.

Maybe you should attempt to move out of the xenophobic wee box you live in and attempt to see the world of politics through rich versus poor instead of country versus country. Even if it taught you nothing about the world, you might begin to perceive your own government in a different light.

And as for the UK 'abusing and insulting' the people of the United States at every opportunity, would that include us allowing your military to use our airports and airspace to refuel bombers and to help your rendition of people who have been refused due legal process? Would that include the huge wave of support from this country for the US after 9/11?

Thankfully, most people over here would overlook your rantings and see the real America, a place for which many here have great affection.

Lastly, why did the American and the UK led prosecution of Megrahi refuse to allow the report of the break in at PanAm on the day of the Lockerbie bombing, into court as evidence? Why did they hide it from the defence team? Why do they still refuse the families access to it?

rjb you really are a jelly bean and a royal........in the.....

You can't weasel out of it any more than Darling could. The UK is the UK. When there was racial strife in say Alabama or Mississippi in the 1960s people around the world didn't say look at what is happening in Alabama and Mississippi, they said look at what is going on in America. You can't divorce one part of yourself when it is convenient. Scotland is as much a part of the UK at least for the time being as England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are no matter what the majority of its people wish. They still prefer their tax subsidies from England more than they'd prefer to dissociate themselves completely but it's probably close.

"If the Arab world removed its money from the US economy, the US would be on its backside."

So would the wealthy Shiekhs who keep it here. America would have to cut back its expenses, something that's long overdue. I say it should start by bringing home all of its troops from Europe and getting out of NATO. Then it could withdraw from the Pacific and let China and Japan have at each other if they want to. If the South Koreans want to defend themselves against North Korea, let them spend their money on their own nuclear weapons. I wonder how much they'd have left to build Kias with if they did.

"And as for the UK 'abusing and insulting' the people of the United States at every opportunity, would that include us allowing your military to use our airports and airspace to refuel bombers and to help your rendition of people who have been refused due legal process?"

Seems to me that according to the detainee who was released to Britain recently, it was the UK government who had far more interest in his interogation than the US. For all we know, the information he divulged prevented another 7-7. Perhaps your morality would prefer that such information should not be extracted by force and that another 7-7 should be allowed to happen and another and another because you think the war on terror should be fought with the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Mine doesn't. I don't think the terrorists take time out for tea every day at 4PM and neither does the CIA. That in itself is reason enough to ban cricket from being played in the US.

I don't know about the break in at Pan Am. Perhaps they wanted first hand documents of who had access to the plane before anyone on the inside who might have been complicit could destroy or remove the evidence.

Britain has made it clear. If you are a terrorist, you are best off getting caught and tried in the UK. If you are convicted, you will get off lightly. They UK is ambivalent at best towards terrorists and only becomes really concerned when it is the victim.

Marcus

"I dont know about the break in at Pan Am. Perhaps they wanted first hand documents of who had access to the plane before anyone on the inside who might have been complicit could destroy or remove any evidence."

The break in took place BEFORE the bomb exploded!! The importance of the break in being investigated and brought out into the open is that there is a strong possibility that who ever broke in - planted the bomb!!

The prosecution knew of the break in, at Megrahi's trial in Holland - but kept it quiet.

Your last post exposes just how uninformed - but willing to criticise and condemn - you are.

"Your last post exposes just how uninformed - but willing to criticise and condemn - you are."

And your post jelly bean exposes that you don't trust the trial. Perhaps you'd prefer that we do away with trials and juries and just let you abjudicate all legal disputes, civil and criminal.

It seems to me that the US has had unfinished business with Britain since the War of 1812. No amount of time or papering over it can cover it up or make it go away. If anything the two societies have continued to diverge and are further apart than ever. Pretending doesn't make it not so.

MAII

"And your post jelly bean exposes that you dont trust the trial."

Hooray!! You goy there, Marcus!!

The jellybean who would be King.

King Jellybean the first of England. Reality....the alternative having watched him all these years is even worse.

Still gettin confused about that Scotland England thing, Marcus.

Not really jellybean. I stopped buying English gin a long time ago. Now I will no longer buy Scotch Whiskey either. I'm sure I'll learn to love Kentucky Bourbon just as much.

Aaaaaah!!!
That explains it. Its the drink!

But what explains you rjb? Jelly beans....laced with LSD?

Marcus - you disappoint me - always thought you were a guy who'd know your drink! WhiskEy is IRISH, Scotch is whisky. The ingredient mix and distillation processes are quite different and the Irish version is much smoother and IMO entirely preferable to Kentucky Bourbon. You might not find our Irish attitude to the release of terrorists any more palatable, however.

What "explains" me, Marcus, is a desire for the truth. In this case, to look beyond the propaganda and self interest of governments, to allow the families access to what actually happened to their loved ones.

You, on the other hand, have displayed an inability to consider practically any subject on this blog site reasonably and rationally. Instead you have taken each subject on here and used them to rant about your hatred of Europeans.

If you continue, I will consider boycotting America's biggest gift to the world. No more burgers for me!

Hey Marcus,

Why dont you read back over all your posts on this thread, all your condemnations, all your arrogance about how superior America is. But do it after youve given us your thoughts on Lt William Calley.

Did you forget about him in all your bluster about British Justice? Did you forget that he murdered over 500 innocent men, women and children at My Lai? Did you forget that he was convicted and sentenced in an American court to life imprisonment in 1971?

Did you forget that your President Nixon commuted his LIFE SENTENCE to a paltry three years house arrest? I wonder what the families of the My Lai massacre thought about that? (That's if there were any left alive!)

My Lai, El Salvador, Iran passenger flight 655, Guantanamo......... and dozens more...

Didnt you pick up the news about any of these things from your wee tranny when you were grape picking in France?

We need no lectures about justice, compassion and morality from you, buddy.

Latest - Robert Mueller, head of the FBI has just written to Kenny McAskill complaining bitterly about the release of Megrahi. He has called it a "mockery of justice."

Robert Mueller? Wouldnt that be the same Bobby Mueller, up to his neck in the Iran/Contra debacle?

https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg71640.html

Imagine this guy having the nerve to write to anyone complaining about a lack of justice?

For whatever reason, the link isnt working. Just google Mueller and you'll find out enough about this guy's credentials.

rjb, it is you who lie taking facts out of context as is typical of Europeans trying to make a point but having to isolate one aspect of a larger more complicated picture to disguise the truth. BBC is famous for it. So was Radio Moscow and the Russian government which as reported today had denied for decades the Molotov-von Ribentrof pact and then said cynically when its existance could no longer be refuted that it was necessary to buy time because the West didn't stand up to the Nazis. (the proof that was a lie was the complete surprise on the Soviet part when Nazi Germany invaded it.) The actions you cited were part of a world war for survival of civilization in which no action was too extreme including global thermonuclear war. In the case of Calley, the massacre was the result of the common experience of American troops of entire villages serving the Viet Cong where women and children were used as assassins. Under our law it was considered a crime but there were mitigating circumstances. Where is your "humanitarian compassion" now as you condemn it? Those men were scared and angry. Their actions were criminal but understandable under the circumstances by anyone except those who refuse to look at them in context. Europeans are clearly hypocrites as you prove again this very minute. In Iran Contra and in El Salvador, those actions were taken to thwart establishment of a Soviet beachhead and ultimate takeover of South and Central America through its enslaved surrogate, Communist Cuba. When put in context, those actions were entirely justified and need no defense except in the context of the separation of powers between branches of American government. It is strictly an American internal affair.

In the war against the Soviet efforts to control the world as in the war on terror, it is clear that Europe is on the wrong side as it always is. That is why Amerians should never trust it, never see it as an ally, or view it as anything less than America's enemy. And that is why this act of betrayal came as no surprise to me. It's not the first incident (remember the French release of Carlos the Jackal?) and it won't be the last.

Thwarting Soviet domination of the world and the breaking of the USSR was the single largest, most intense, and most sustained military effort in American history and the greatest risk the US ever took. At stake was the very survival of the human race as a species. European dismissal of it and its ultimate success is just one more disgusting exhibition of their contempt for America. What Europeans don't know is that great and growing contempt for Europe and Europeans in return has and contues to become part of the American view of the world.

i.e If America does it, fine and dandy. If anyone else does it, its a disgrace.

More questions for you to ignore, Marcus.

Were you aware that Major Charles Mckee of the US Intelligence Agency and Matthew Gannon of the CIA (both based in Beirut) were aboard the Pan Am flight which exploded above Lockerbie?

Were you aware that they were on their way to the CIA Headquarters to report COREA (a branch of the CIA working in the Middle East) for transporting heroin (with Monzar Al Kassar of Iran/Contra fame) into New York?

Just a couple of those 'wider' issues which Kenny McKaskill refers to.
Some bed time reading -

https://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/search?q=lockerbie

Lastly, for the moment, a comment on the so called outrage of the American public about this decision.

There are two websites calling for American citizens to boycott Scotland and to sign a petition saying so.

One has 95 signatures, the other 171.

On closer inspection I noticed that many of the comments were not from irate Americans, but were from citizens across the globe demanding that America start to practice what it is presently preaching to Scotland regarding numerous attrocities it has sponsored over the years, people angered by the utter hypocrisy of the US government.

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/boycott-scotland-for-releasing-megrahi-lockerbie-bomberbomer

rjb, you can try to divert attention away from the central fact that the terrorist was tried, convicted, and sentenced according to Scottish law and was serving a life sentence under both the provisions of that law and by prior agreement with the US government that if he were convicted, he would not be released for at least 28 years. There is no escape from those central facts, the trial is not the subject of this issue, betrayal of supposed allies and cowardice in the face of terrorism is. So is cynicism as the prospect of this being part of a commercial "deal" by the UK government looms as a possibility.

The prospect of this happening was widely reported in the media for at least a week. So far all of the condemnation has rung hollow. Actions speak far louder than words. The question now isn't what is being said but what will be done about it. I will be writing a letter to President Obama requesting that he break off diplomatic relations with the UK and that all commercial transactions directly between the UK and the US be banned for 189 days. Perhaps all UK visitors to the US should be told to leave and not come back for 189 days as well.

BAD DOG!

Nae biscuit? :-(

Paul Foot & John Ashton's 1995 investigation into Lockerbie

The Guardian (London)

July 29, 1995

INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE;
More than six years on from the Lockerbie disaster, no one appears any wiser about how and why the bombing happened. The authorities always claimed there was no warning of an attack on a Pan-Am flight. New information proves that this is untrue

BYLINE: Paul Foot & John Ashton

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. T22

LENGTH: 11960 words

WHO planted the bomb which blew Pan Am 103 out of the sky over Scotland, killing all 259 people on board? Six-and-a-half years after the Lockerbie disaster, none of the bereaved families or friends of the dead knows the answer. A bewildering array of different suspects has been paraded before them. Even the identity of the airport where the bomb was planted is unclear.

From their governments on both sides of the Atlantic the families have had to put up with paralysis, duplicity and, finally, silence. The current suspects, they are told, are two Libyan airline officials who put the bomb on a flight from Malta. The officials vehemently deny the charge. They refuse to go to court in Britain or the US. Until they stand trial in either of those countries, say the governments and the United Nations, no questions about the disaster will be answered. The whole issue is gridlocked. All further inquiry is officially discouraged.


'The official version,' says Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died at Lockerbie, 'is no longer credible.' This article follows the Lockerbie story from the point of view of the bemused British relatives and friends of the victims. Drawing on hitherto unpublished documents, it casts doubt on the central thesis of the official version - that the Lockerbie bomb first went on a plane at Malta. It provides new information, until now classified, that western intelligence knew perfectly well that a Pan Am airliner was in danger from terrorists. It exposes a co-ordinated campaign by the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to smear and intimidate investigators who question the official version - and their witnesses and sources. And it calls for more investigation and more disclosure on both sides of the Atlantic.

THE FATAL NIGHT

The Strange Case Of Dr Fieldhouse Weird and inexplicable happenings haunted the Lockerbie disaster on the very night the plane went down - December 21, 1988. Dr David Fieldhouse, an experienced police surgeon from Bradford, Yorkshire, heard about it on News At Ten. He went straight to the telephone and phoned the police station at Lockerbie. If he could be of any use, he said, he could be at Lockerbie in less than an hour-and-a-half.

The Lockerbie police eagerly accepted his offer, and a few minutes later he was on the motorway to Scotland. He got there before midnight, reported to the police station, and was eventually sent out with a police officer to find bodies and certify them dead. All through the long, cold night the doctor and his companion slogged through the fields round Tundergarth church. Not stopping for sleep or food, he worked all through the following day as well. When he reported to the police station that evening, he had certified 59 bodies dead and labelled them accordingly. In the following weeks he gave up large chunks of his spare time travelling to Lockerbie and helping the police properly to identify the bodies and where they had been found.

For this selfless effort Dr Fieldhouse received, and expected to receive, no recognition. What was his reward? Nearly two years later, without any warning, he was unjustifiably tarnished by a police officer in official sworn evidence to the fatal accident inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster.

The officer was Sergeant David Johnston of the Strathclyde police. His evidence was 'led' by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Scottish Lord Advocate. Fraser is a career politician in the ruling Conservative Party, who had served briefly in the House of Commons as a Tory MP for Aberdeen. Sgt Johnston started his evidence about Dr Fieldhouse as follows: 'On the evening of the disaster,' he said, 'and in the early hours of the following day, Dr Fieldhouse went out and examined a number of victims on his own, pronouncing life extinct, and attached on them his own form of identification. This was not known to us until some considerable time later.' In fact, Dr Fieldhouse was accompanied throughout by police officers, three of whom he has named. He kept in close touch with the police throughout. The sergeant was completely wrong, but Lord Fraser did not correct him. On the contrary, the Lord Advocate continued with a series of questions which rubbed salt in the doctor's wounds. After asking about the discovery of the body of US businessman Tom Ammerman, Fraser went on: Q. Would this be another example of Dr or Mr Fieldhouse carrying out a search on his own? A. It would, my Lord.

Q. And marking the body of a person who is dead without notifying the police? A. That is correct.

It was not correct at all. Mr Ammerman's body had been found by Dr Fieldhouse and an accompanying police officer. It was marked in the presence of and with the agreement of the police officer.

When Dr Fieldhouse appeared at the inquiry some weeks later - on January 22, 1991 - he quietly disposed of all the allegations which had been tossed about so freely in public. He was puzzled to hear that there were 58 bodies identified in the area he'd worked in - he had identified and tagged 59. He was amazed that all except two of his labels had all been thrown away and replaced with others.

Sheriff Mowat, who was in charge of the inquiry, concluded: 'I would record my thanks to Dr Fieldhouse and my apologies for the undeserved criticism of his activities.' Nearly two years later, in December 1993, Dr Fieldhouse gave an interview for a film about Lockerbie. A few days after the interview, Fieldhouse was summoned to a meeting with two senior West Yorkshire police officers at Wakefield and sacked as police surgeon. He was given three month's notice - but no credible explanation.

FARMER WILSON'S SUITCASE

The treatment of Dr Fieldhouse is not the only story from the tragic windswept night round Lockerbie which still puzzles relatives of the dead. What is the truth, they wonder, about Farmer Jim Wilson, of Tundergarth Mains Farm near Lockerbie, whose fields were littered with the debris of bodies and baggage after the crash? He told one of the relatives who visited him soon after the disaster that he had been puzzled by the police response to a suitcase he had found in one his fields.

The case, he said, was full of cellophane packets of a white powder, which he thought were drugs. He told the police about it, but they did not react. He had to ring them a second time before they came to take it away. Farmer Wilson, who now understandably refuses to answer questions on the subject, gave evidence at the fatal accident inquiry. To his surprise, he was not asked about the suitcase or the drugs he assumed were in it. The authorities on both sides of the Atlantic continued to insist that no drugs, save a small quantity of cannabis, were found on Pan Am 103.

Some of the relatives carried out further inquiries. They discovered that the name Farmer Wilson had seen on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the Pan Am 103 passenger list.

THE INVASION OF INVESTIGATORS

A senior official at Carlisle airport was astonished at the numbers of officials who arrived by plane from London that night and the following day. At least two coach-loads of people arrived before midnight on a Boeing 727. Around 20 of them were Pan Am employees, but there were many other Americans with no obvious affiliation. Another 727 arrived in the early afternoon of December 22, this time bringing people from the US. In it were yet more men in plain clothes. Among their baggage was a single coffin. When they realised that they were being filmed by a cameraman from the local Border TV, they became agitated and demanded that he stop.

Since permission had been granted by the local police, the airport official allowed the cameraman to continue and the pictures were broadcast that night. No explanation has been given about the coffin.

THE STRANGE OFFER TO DAVID JOHNSTON

David Johnston, a young reporter from Radio Forth in Edinburgh, with excellent contacts with the Scottish police, was one of the first journalists on the scene of the disaster. In a news bulletin on February 2, 1989, he reported a claim that the bomb had been planted on a crack team of US intelligence agents who were travelling on flight 103 on their way back from Beirut.

Within an hour of the programme being broadcast Johnston was visited in his office by senior Edinburgh police who demanded to know the source of the story. When he refused to disclose it, he was threatened with prosecution and, simultaneously, made a bizarre offer: to reveal his source to the Prime Minister in Downing Street. He turned that down as well.

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE RED TARPAULIN

On the night of the disaster, and for weeks afterwards, teams of rescue volunteers searched the area. One volunteer was Ron Smith of Castle Douglas in Galloway. Earlier this year he revealed that fellow rescue workers had come across a large object under a red tarpaulin. As they approached it, they were warned off by gunmen in the doorway of a hovering helicopter. One of these volunteers has spoken to us. He confirms that the incident took place just north of the road from Lockerbie to Langholm Road, at Map reference 294 818. Farmer Innes Graham was also warned by Americans to stay away from a small wooded area on top of the hill to the west of his family's farm near Waterbeck, a few miles east of Lockerbie. These strange experiences on that first night worried many of the bereaved relatives. Their worries soon turned into anger.

HOW MUCH DID THE AUTHORITIES KNOW BEFOREHAND?

Was Botha Warned? Almost at once, there was a strong suspicion that the authorities knew the airliner was in danger, and passe d the information on to selected passengers. The most dramatic example of this which was published in the German paper Die Zeit, on the first anniversary of the disaster. The paper suggested that the South African Foreign Secretary, Pik Botha, and his retinue intended to fly on 103 but had been warned off. Botha eventually flew on the earlier flight, Pan Am 101, which, unlike flight 103, had special security checks at Heathrow.

Botha and the South African foreign office have denied that he was warned off 103, and no one in South Africa or Britain has been able finally to confirm or refute the Die Zeit story. But there were two other crucial pieces of evidence - one of them never before published - that Pan Am 103 was known to be in danger before it took off.

THE HELSINKI WARNING

On December 5 1988, 16 days before the disaster, a man rang the American Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, with a message that within the next two weeks a Finnish woman would carry a bomb aboard a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the US. The caller spoke with a Middle Eastern accent and said that the people behind the bomb attempt had links to the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal. The Embassy sent a classified cable to the state department, which was copied to the American consulate in Frankfurt and other embassies. The US President's Commission's report on aviation security and terrorism, which reported in May 1990, reckoned that 'thousands of US government employees saw the Helsinki threat'.

Among the lucky ones were the Americans who worked in the US Embassy in Moscow. On December 13, a week and a day before Pan Am 103 went down, an 'administrative notice to all employees' was posted on the board of the Embassy, warning of the threat.

At least one civilian in Moscow changed his flight as a result of the posted warning, and another employee changed the booking she had made for a US journalist. Not a single Russian embassy worker took flight Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt on December 21, a standard and popular route home for Christmas.

The US President's Commission on Lockerbie reported that by December 10 the Finnish Police had concluded that the warning was 'not a credible one'. Similarly, the British Department of Transport told Pan Am in December that the British intelligence community had concluded that the threat was 'not real'.

Yet the notice went up on the board in Moscow three days after the conclusion of the Finnish police that the notice was not credible. Moreover, the US Federal Aviation Authority did not give an 'all clear' to the aviation authorities. Neither did Pan Am dismiss the warning. Their officials started special screening of Finnish women passengers.

The news of the Helsinki warning broke soon after the disaster and engulfed many relatives in rage and despair. The British Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, reluctantly disclosed that there had been only 16 bomb warnings about aircraft relevant to Britain in 1988, none of them as specific as the one in Helsinki.

Channon and his successors insisted that the Helsinki warning was 'a hoax'. Martin and Rita Cadman were dubious. Their beloved son Bill, 32, a brilliant sound designer, was on the fatal plane. Three -and-half years after the disaster, in July 1992, they read in the Independent that a man called Stephen Docherty had been sent to prison for four years for making a hoax call to police about a bomb at Victoria station. Martin Cadman wrote at once to the Finnish embassy in London asking who had been prosecuted for the hoax call about the Pan Am airliner and what punishment they received. The answer came back on November 17, 1992. 'The identity of the caller cannot be disclosed, as sufficient evidence has not been assembled to convict the chief suspect, a foreigner who obtained Finnish citizenship.' Martin and Rita Cadman were vindicated. If the hoaxer could not be identified, who could say for sure that the call was a hoax? They fired off a letter to the Earl of Caithness, junior Minister for Transport, asking for a further inquiry into the Helsinki warning. Caithness replied that he had 'nothing to add, and had not got the authority to release the name of the hoax caller'.

When the Cadmans pointed out that no hoaxer had yet been identified, they received a couple of testy letters from the director and coordinator of transport security at the Department of Transport, Mr Harry Ditmas. 'This warning was a hoax,' echoed by Mr Ditmas, without proof or explanation. The Cadmans' irritation at the duplicity of the authorities increased when the 'Helsinki hoaxer' had been named two years before they were told he could not be identified. He was a Palestinian resident in Finland called Samra Mahayoun.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT WARNING

Today we can reveal another warning, issued by an intelligence source to the US State Department's Office of Diplomatic Security. This warning was issued three days before the phone call in Helsinki. It has recently been released - but not yet published - under the Freedom of Information Act. The name of the informant is blacked out, and the message reads: 'Team of Palestinians not assoc with Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) intends to atk US tgts in Europe. Time frame is present. Tgts specified are Pan Am airlines and US mil bases.' This is the clearest proof that the US government had direct intelligence information threatening Pan Am. The comment attached to it read as follows: 'We cannot refute or confirm this'.

OPERATION AUTUMN LEAVES

Astonishingly, five weeks before this warning was received, a 'team of Palestinians not associated with the PLO' had been arrested in Germany in possession of a bomb in a Toshiba cassette recorder strikingly similar to the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

In the months before the bombing the German police had mounted an anti -terrorist operation under the code-name Autumn Leaves. The operation had led to the arrest of a gang associated with a splinter group of the Palestinian movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). The leader of this splinter was Ahmed Jibril, who enjoyed the confidence and protection of the government of Syria and its dictator Hafez al -Assad. Jibril had masterminded several terrorist attacks in recent years, and had, so the intelligence agents reported, taken on an assignment to revenge the shooting down the previous summer of an Iranian airbus by a US warship.

All 290 people on the airbus had been killed. Outrage in Iran was intense and there were widespread demands for revenge. Tehran radio declared that the incident would be avenged 'in blood-spattered skies'. Moreover, the intelligence reports revealed, the leader of Jibril's terrorist gang, Hafez Dalkamoni, had been arrested outside a flat in Neuss, Germany, not two hours drive from Frankfurt, from whose airport Pan Am 103's feeder flight had originated. A bomb with a barometric pressure switch, packed inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder, was found in his car.

Investigators were in no doubt that the bomb was specifically designed to blow up aircraft. Pieces of a similar model of recorder had been found in the wreckage at Lockerbie. The conclusion seemed inescapable. Pan Am 103 had been blown up by a Palestinian gang, protected by Syria and paid for by Iran. The German police knew the name of the bomb-maker they had arrested - Marwan Khreesat. Mysteriously, Khreesat was released soon after he had been arrested with Dalkamoni. The official reason was that there was not enough evidence against him. In April 1989, further police raids in Neuss produced two more bombs designed by Khreesat specifically to blow up aircraft. By then no one was in any doubt that Khreesat had made the bomb which found its way on to Pan Am 103A before it left Frankfurt for Heathrow.

LUNCH AT THE GARRICK

One man utterly confident of this conclusion was Paul Channon, British Secretary of State for Transport. On March 16 1989, less than three months after Lockerbie, Channon lunched in London's exclusive Garrick Club with five of Britain's top journalists.

Channon beamed at the journalists over the excellent food and wine. The 'brilliant detective work of the smallest police force in the country' - Dumfries and Galloway - had, he revealed, uncovered the guilty bombers. Arrests, Channon told his wide-eyed hosts, were imminent. Such conversations, especially at the Garrick Club, are 'on lobby terms': that is, not for attribution.

But the size of the scoop they had been offered was too much for at least one of the journalists. Next morning's papers carried the sensational news that a cabinet minister had revealed that the Lockerbie killers had been identified and would soon be arrested.

OPERATION 'LOW-KEY'

Almost at the exact moment as Channon was exciting the journalists over that Garrick lunch, George Bush, the US President, telephoned the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Lockerbie was the subject of their conversation. No doubt Bush too had heard of the success of the Scottish police. His advice to Mrs Thatcher however was to 'low-key' any excitement over Lockerbie.

The news of this telephone conversation was reported on January 11 1989 in the Washington Post by Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta. The conversation was denied by both the White House and 10 Downing Street, but Anderson and Van Atta stuck to their story. Whatever was said that March morning, the subject of Lockerbie suddenly slipped from the ecstatic high sung by Channon to a very low key indeed.

The bereaved families, who had assumed after all the publicity for the Garrick lunch that the suspects for the bombing would soon be brought to trial, noticed to their horror that the whole affair seemed to slip suddenly from the public gaze. They stepped up their demand for a proper inquiry. In September 1989, six months after the Garrick lunch, the newly-formed UK Families Flight 103 met Paul Channon's successor as Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson. Parkinson promised the families a full judicial inquiry. To his horror, the Cabinet, and especially Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Parkinson's close friend and ally, slapped him down. He came whimpering back to the relatives to tell them he had failed.

'Low key' were the words allegedly used by President Bush in that denied telephone conversation with Thatcher in March. In September, the relatives came to know what 'low key' meant - the refusal of a proper investigation and its replacement by an impotent fatal accident inquiry with no subpoena powers which refused to investigate how the bomb got on the plane for fear of interfering with the police inquiries.

Years later, in 1994, Parkinson took part in a television programme about another disaster - the sinking of the pleasure craft Marchioness on the Thames. He confirmed that Thatcher had blocked the Lockerbie inquiry. 'I was discussing with the Lockerbie relatives,' Parkinson explained, 'whether we couldn't have some form of public inquiry which would have meant, because the security services were involved, inevitably a certain amount of suspicion - and I wondered whether I could get a High Court judge to look into the security aspects privately and report to me. If I could get the relatives to agree with that, if I got that done, that would satisfy them. Because when you get into the Lockerbie business - how did we find out certain information, how did we know this, how did we know that? - you would have had to recall not only our own intelligence sources but information we were receiving from overseas. Therefore, that had to be a closed area. . .' This came as close as it could to identifying the real block to a proper inquiry: 'our own intelligence sources'. It was not clear to the relatives then, or now, why the intelligence services on either side of the Atlantic should oppose an inquiry. A month after the Parkinson fiasco, one remarkable answer emerged.

THE LEBANESE CONNECTION

On November 2, 1989, the news leaked of a report on the Lockerbie bombing by Interfor, a New York corporate investigative company hired by Pan Am and its insurers. The report suggested that the Dalkamoni gang had got the bomb on the airliner at Frankfurt by exploiting a security loophole. In their desperate bid to free American hostages in Beirut, American intelligence agents had, reported Interfor, struck a deal with Syrian narco -terrorists.

In exchange for information about the hostages, the agents agreed to facilitate a route for drugs from the Lebanon into the United States. The luggage with the drugs was protected by American intelligence. Normal security restrictions on baggage at the relevant airports was removed and the drugs allowed to sail through. The terrorist gang, with the help of allies at Frankfurt airport, had exploited this security loophole by exchanging a bag with a bomb for one with drugs. The report named a young passenger on the doomed plane, a Lebanese American called Khaled Jafaar as the 'mule' whose bag of drugs was switched. Jafaar's name had already been mentioned in dramatic circumstances. On New Year's Eve 1988, 10 days after the Lockerbie disaster, the Daily Express devoted its front page to exposing Jafaar as, 'THE BOMB CARRIER'. The Express named its sources as 'the FBI and Scotland Yard'.

Even more fantastically, the Interfor report surmised that Major Charles McKee, the head of the US Intelligence team on the plane, was shocked by the deal struck with the narco-terrorists, and was returning on Pan Am 103 to blow the whistle on his colleagues. The inference was obvious, and the report made it plain. Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community in part at least to get rid of the whistleblower.

The Interfor report was greeted with widespread scepticism. Commentators pointed out that Pan Am was being sued by the families for negligence, and stood to duck all responsibility for the disaster if the blame could be shifted to a bizarre intelligence plot. Scepticism about the Interfor report was compounded by new speculation about Lockerbie which switched attention from Beirut and Frankfurt to the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta.

THE MALTESE CONNECTION

As the first anniversary of the crash grew closer, a long series of articles in the Sunday Times, which relied heavily on leaks from the Scottish police, reported that the 'net was closing' on the Lockerbie suspects. These articles - by David Leppard - stated as irrefutable fact that the bombing had been carried out by the PFLP-GC under orders from Ahmed Jibril. The gang was led by Dalkamoni, the bomb was made by Marwan Khreesat.

Leppard's articles added a new twist. The bomb, they reported, had first been put on a plane not in London, where Pan Am 103 had taken off, nor in Frankfurt, where its 'feeder', Pan Am 103A, had started, but in Malta. The Maltese connection had been detected, the articles argued, because some clothes made in Malta had been found in the suitcase in which, police believed, the bomb had been planted.

The finger of suspicion was pointed directly at another alleged member of the Dalkamoni gang: Abu Talb, a 35-year-old Palestinian who was in prison in Sweden awaiting trial for terrorist offences there. Talb, reported the Sunday Times on December 17, 1989, had visited Malta and had been identified by a Maltese boutique owner as the man who bought the clothes in the bomb suitcase, including a Babygro. 'The trail to Talb was so strong,' wrote reporter David Leppard, that Scottish police had gone to Sweden to interview him. He was, the paper reported, due any moment to be extradited to stand trial for the Lockerbie bombing. The bomb, these articles insisted, had been put on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt for transfer there to Pan Am 103A which linked with Pan Am 103 at Heathrow. Thus the theory had the bomb surviving two airport switches - at Frankfurt and at Heathrow - before exploding over Lockerbie.

For this remarkable theory the Sunday Times (and their informants, the Scottish police) relied on two documents which had not been made available to them until several months after the bombing. These were a computerised list of all the transactions in Frankfurt airport's automated baggage system which related to Pan Am 103, and a hand-written worksheet from one of the several stations where baggage came into the system.

A bag which ended up on Pan Am 103 could be traced to a station where one of the baggage handlers had, in a hurried scrawl, identified it as coming from an Air Malta flight. Yet there were no passengers on the Air Malta flight transferring to Pan Am 103A. It followed, the newspaper argued, that an unaccompanied bag from Malta carried the bomb which blew up Pan Am 103! Together with the Babygro from the boutique, these documents proved the Maltese connection - and the Maltese connection proved the guilt of Dalkamoni and Talb.

Almost all the information which led to these exciting scenarios came through the intelligence agencies. Journalists on their own in such inquiries have very little hope of discovering any information. They go cap in hand to intelligence sources and sift what they are given. In 1989, and most of 1990, the intelligence-based charges against the Jibril gang fitted snugly with American and British foreign policy in the Middle East. Both countries had broken off relations with Syria because of that country's known and persistent support for international terrorism. The long war between Iraq and Iran had ended in the summer of 1988, with the governments of both countries ranged firmly on the side of Iraq. The old hostility to Iran - which dated back to the 1979 revolution there and the seizure of US hostages - lingered on. Though the whole Lockerbie issue had been declared 'low key', both governments were quite 'comfortable' with what seemed at the time the obvious central truth about Lockerbie: that the Jibril gang and the regimes in Syria and Iran were responsible.

This official version was staged again in November 1990 in a long documentary programme by Granada Television to mark the second anniversary of the bombing. Special attention was given to the Maltese connection. A sinister looking Arab was seen to check in his bag at Malta airport and then to slide surreptitiously away to watch the plane take off with the bag in it.

The beauty of 'intelligence journalism' is that it can hardly ever be tested. Granada Television, however, was unlucky. Immediately after the programme, Air Malta sued Granada for libel. A long, powerful and hitherto unpublished document from their lawyers, top city solicitors Norton Rose, demonstrated that there were 39 passengers and 55 pieces of baggage on the Air Malta flight; that all the bags had been checked in by the passengers which flew; that there were no bags on the flight interlined for Pan Am 103 or 103A. So the scenario outlined in the film was, the document insists, quite impossible.

The Norton Rose document proceeds in specific and irrefutable detail to challenge the entire theory that a bomb was put on the flight at Malta. The lawyers carefully investigated the documents - the print-out and the work-sheets from Frankfurt Airport - which had persuaded the Sunday Times and the Scottish police that the bomb bag had come from Malta. They concluded, first, that these documents were not designed to identify the flight from which baggage had come; second, that their accuracy depended on the dubious memory of harassed baggage handlers, and third, that even if they were accurate, they did not preclude the possibility that the suspect bomb-bag had been planted in the complex of Frankfurt airport.

This comprehensive demolition job on the Maltese connection was never heard in open court. Shortly before the case was due to come on early in 1993, Granada, which prides itself on openly defending libel actions, threw in the towel, and paid pounds 15,005 into court. Air Malta accepted the money, and, in a statement allowed by the judge, insisted that they had cleared their name. The statement was studiously ignored by the entire British media.

By that time, the whole political situation in the Middle East had been turned upside down. In August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, threatened to control 8 per cent of US oil supplies and to topple the sheikdoms of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia on which Western stability in the Middle East depended. 'A new world order' was called for, with different alliances. If there was to be a western war with Iraq, Iran had to be seduced into neutrality. More importantly, the Assad dictatorship in Syria had to be courted. If Iran was neutralised and Syria lined up against her old enemy Saddam, Iraq could be defeated without too much upset in the Arab world.

In November 1990, Britain restored diplomatic relations with Syria. Ahmed Jibril, whom everyone assumed was responsible for Lockerbie, was still living there. The same dictator, Assad, was still in charge, presiding over the same terrorism, the same torture in his prisons and the same denial of human rights to dissenters. But now he was an ally of the West. In January and February 1991 Syrian troops joined the western allies in an assault on occupied Kuwait. Saddam's forces were instantly repulsed. Cheap oil flowed freely again to the US, whose government was eternally grateful to its new allies. Opponents of the dictator Assad were still being locked up and tortured, but President Bush (like President Clinton after him) and Prime Minister John Major covered him with bouquets.

THE LIBYAN CONNECTION

As the political allegiances in the region changed, so, at first imperceptibly but with gathering speed, did the official investigations into the Lockerbie disaster. The centre of operations was effectively shifted from the quaint police headquarters in the Scottish Borders to the more sumptuous surroundings of Langley, the base of the CIA. The man in day-to-day charge of the Lockerbie investigation there was Vincent Cannistraro. Cannistraro had worked with Oliver North in President Reagan's National Security Council. He had been a leading figure in the movement to support the Contras in Nicaragua and UNITA in Angola. He had specialised in the US vendetta against Libya. He had helped mastermind a secret programme to destabilise the Libyan regime which culminated in the bombing of Libya in 1986 - an act of international piracy which, for the first time in the history of Muammar Gadaffi's turbulent and dictatorial rule, united the entire Libyan people behind him.

Cannistraro retired from the CIA in September 1990 but by then had helped lay the foundations for a completely new approach to the Lockerbie investigation. This time the chief culprit country was not Iran or Syria - but Libya.

On November 14, 1991, in a blaze of publicity, the American and British governments announced that two Libyan airline officials - Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah - were charged with planting the bomb which brought down Pan Am 103. The official story had completely changed. Gone was any reference to Jibril, Dalkamoni, Talb, Khreesat, Syria, Iran or Palestine. President Bush went out of his way to exculpate Syria which, he announced in a characteristically elegant phrase, had taken 'a bum rap' on Lockerbie.

Simultaneously, like an obedient sheep dog, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd barked in the British House of Commons that Libyans alone were suspected. Other countries, he said, were not implicated. By amazing coincidence, the only culprits could now be found in the only Arab country besides Iraq to which the US and Britain were openly hostile. Pam Dix, secretary of the UK Families Flight 103, whose brother Peter died at Lockerbie, still remembers her sense of shock on hearing of the indictment against the Libyans. 'In all the three years since the disaster,' she said, 'none of us ever had an inkling that Libyans were responsible. One question I asked myself at once was: why did the American authorities not wait until their suspects left Libya for a country from which they could be extradited? Why did they rush out the announcement when they knew their suspects would not be released for trial?' To assist confused relatives and anyone else who had followed the story, the US State Department issued a special notice. The 'dominant hypothesis of the early stages of the Pan Am 103 investigation', it conceded, had 'focused' on Iran and Jibril. 'Over time however fresh evidence undermined the initial theory linking the PFLP-GC to the bomb.' Four reasons were given: 1. The radio with the bomb found in Dalkamoni's car 'differed markedly' from the radio bomb in the plane.

2. The Maltese clothes in the suitcase indicated the bomb went on at Malta.

3. The bomb in the plane had been set off by a 'sophisticated electronic timer' while the PFLP-GC bomb discovered in Germany had 'relatively crude timers'. Furthermore, such sophisticated timers had been delivered from Switzerland to Libya.

4. There was no evidence of an altimeter switch in the Pan Am bomb.

None of this was persuasive. Marwan Khreesat made many bombs in many different radios. The 'marked difference' between the radio in Dalkamoni's car and the one in the plane was that the first had one speaker, the other had two. Both were Toshibas. The clothes from the boutique had been used to confirm official suspicion of the PFLP-GC/Jibril gang. The rather subtle distinction between the timers and the switches hardly seemed enough evidence to justify such a dramatic change in the course of the inquiry.

THE CASE OF THE UBIQUITOUS CIRCUIT BOARD

The central plank of the indictment was the alleged correlation between the timers - alleged to have been sold to Libyans - and the tiny fragment of circuit board found near Lockerbie. The timers, the indictment revealed, had been made by a firm in Switzerland. Their circuit boards matched a tiny fragment retrieved from the Lockerbie searches.

This coincidence between the circuit board and the timers has been plagued with questions from the moment it was first mooted. For instance, who found the circuit board and when? It depends what you read. In 1992, American journalist Mark Perry published a book called Eclipse - The Last Days Of The CIA. This declares that the fragment was found by an unnamed Scottish worker in a field outside Lockerbie 'on a misty morning in early April'.

British journalist Diarmuid Jeffreys, on the other hand, in his book The Bureau - Inside Today's FBI, says that the fragment was found 'sometime in 1990' in a 'piece of charred shirt' by the FBI's forensic expert Thomas Thurman. Another recent book on the FBI, by Ronald Kessler, quotes the assistant director of the FBI forensic laboratory saying that the British found the fragment a whole year before Thurman got it. And who identified the fragment as part of the timer? Jeffreys and Kessler give the credit to Thomas Thurman, Perry to a 'veteran CIA analyst' and David Leppard of the Sunday Times to a British military forensic scientist (and hero of the investigation which wrongly jailed the Maguire Seven) Dr Thomas Hayes. The four authors each have different dates for the establishing of the link. They offer a choice between June, August, October and November 1990. It is not hard to imagine the enthusiasm with which a top barrister would expose the history of this crucial 'evidence' linking the bombing to Libya.

And just how firm was the Libyan connection to the timers? To start with, the US State department claimed that all timers from the Swiss firm had been delivered to Libya. This theory was weakened in December 1993 when the BBC radio programme File On Four proved that the Swiss firm had provided the same model of timers to the East German secret police, the Stasi.

The bulk of the indictment asserted without proof that Libyan intelligence had planned the bomb attack, and carried it out through two of its agents. These assertions relied on the say-so of an intelligence team led by a man who once worked closely with Oliver North.

THE HIDDEN AGENDA

None of the active British relatives is convinced by the indictment. In the four years since the indictment was announced, the case against the Libyans has got weaker. The British families continue to be puzzled about the sudden and unexpected change in the Lockerbie suspects. It seems obvious to them that the Dalkamoni gang was responsible for the bombing. So why was the gang not pursued, and why was such a crude official blanket cast over the whole Lockerbie affair? Increasingly, the families hark back to the ghastly theories expounded in the Interfor report. Is there, they wonder, a hidden agenda to Lockerbie, a story within a story, which is the real reason for the 'low-key' approach of officialdom on both sides of the Atlantic? These suspicions were further aroused by the publication in September 1993 - in Britain alone - of Trail Of The Octopus by Donald Goddard, the story of former Defence Intelligence Agency agent Lester Coleman. Like the Interfor report, Coleman concludes there is a connection between the drugs run from Lebanon through Cyprus, where he was based, and Frankfurt airport which contributed to the Lockerbie disaster. Coleman's detractors accuse him of fleeing his country to avoid charges of falsely procuring a passport. New information published in the Scotsman in March this year, however, suggests that the passport charges were trumped up. The FBI claimed that Coleman had asked for a copy of a birth certificate of a dead person, Thomas Leavy, with which to forge a false passport. The relevant authority at New London, Connecticut, however, insists that no person of that name was born at the time claimed by the FBI.

The entire case was invented. But why would a charge of passport fraud be invented unless to intimidate Coleman, and why would the authorities want to do that? Four days before his book was published, Coleman was indicted on another charge: perjury. The first count alleges that he falsely claimed to speak Arabic - which he speaks fluently.

Lester Coleman is not the only sceptic about the official version of the Lockerbie story who has suffered at the hands of the authorities. Juval Aviv, the president of Interfor, who carried out the inquiry for Pan Am and arrived at such extraordinary conclusions, has recently been charged with mail fraud. John Brennan, the President of the insurers for the now defunct Pan Am, has been charged with fraud.

Like Lester Coleman, Aviv insists that charges against him have been trumped up. All three investigations were started by the same assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of New York Court - yet neither Brennan nor Aviv have their businesses located in that district, and none of their alleged offences was committed there. All these instances of alleged state harassment came within a few weeks of a 90-minute Channel 4 programme on Lockerbie entitled The Maltese Double Cross. Produced by the American film-maker Allan Francovich, it was broadcast on May 11. It featured an interview with a relative of a passenger on the fatal flight called Khalid Jafaar. The relative stated that the boy had been duped by terrorists into taking the bomb on the plane in a bag he believed was carrying drugs. Francovich's film was dogged by continuous official obstruction and resistance.

When it finally got on the air, the Scottish Crown Office and the US Embassy took the unusual step of issuing a strongly-worded press release vigorously attacking the programme and the people who appeared in it. For years the same Crown Office had insisted that it was not the job of government to comment on media speculation about Lockerbie.

THE 'SUB JUDICE' STALEMATE

In the aftermath of The Maltese Double Cross, the stalemate returns. As soon as the indictments were revealed, the British and American governments insisted that the two Libyan suspects should be brought to trial in Scotland or the US. The Libyan government refused to release them. Feeble economic sanctions, not including an oil embargo, were imposed on Libya by the UN in a supposed bid to force the suspects out. Predictably, they have not worked. The Libyan government has, however, agreed to release the men to stand trial in a neutral country, such as the Hague in Holland or Switzerland.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in Pan Am 103 and who has campaigned ever since to find out what happened, asks: 'What is wrong with a trial in a neutral country? Why shouldn't both sides be treated fairly in Holland or Switzerland? There is talk all the time of the need for international courts - to try Bosnian war criminals for example. We want these men to stand trial. I've written again and again to British and American governments to ask why the Libyans can't be tried in a neutral country, but haven't had a satisfactory reply. In fact the US government hasn't replied at all.' There are many precedents in English law for shifting the place of a trial to avoid local prejudice against the accused. Why can't the same argument prevail at international level? One crucial effect of the stalemate caused by the Libyan indictments has been the deflection of all independent investigation into the Lockerbie disaster. 'We have the suspects,' is the official answer to all inquiries. 'The case is sub judice. No comment.' Many British relatives suspect that this official silence suits both governments. Their suspicions have been confirmed by two recent incidents.

THE SNUBBING OF ALLAN STEWART

No one served the conservative government more faithfully than Allan Stewart MP. He became a junior Minister in the Scottish Office in 1981, and he was still there in 1995. He resigned his post after an incident on a contested motorway site, in which he allegedly brandished an axe-handle against the protestors. Out of office, he decided to respond to Muslim constituents who were worried about government sanctions against Libya. He went to Libya and secured the agreement of the Gadaffi government to release the two suspects for trial before a Scottish judge and jury and according to Scottish legal procedures in a neutral country. At last was hope of a compromise, a break in the deadlock. The Libyan government's concessions were substantial. What possible objection could there now be against holding the trial in a neutral country? Back in the House of Commons, Stewart proposed an amendment to the Scottish Criminal Justice Bill then going through the Scottish Grand Committee. His amendment permitted cases to be heard by a Scottish judge and jury outside Scotland. It was voted down by the Labour and Tory members of the Committee - only one backbencher, Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, who for years has challenged the official version of the Lockerbie story, supported him.

THE US AUTHORITIES THROW IN THE TOWEL

Many families now suspect that the British and American authorities would be delighted if the Libyan suspects are never released, and there is never a trial. On June 8 a front page article in the Guardian quoted anonymous US officials saying that President Clinton had effectively given up on efforts to bring the two Libyans to trial.

Perhaps the most infuriating effect of the sub judice stalemate is the official silence. In the United States, attempts to get information about Lockerbie under the Freedom of Information Act have been constantly thwarted on grounds of national security. Only two important documents have been released, both after a delay of four years. In the prevailing silence, the relatives feel they are pawns being pushed around on the chess board of international power politics. The questions go on forever. Why did the police so recklessly tarnish Dr Fieldhouse? Why did Farmer Wilson's suitcase vanish? Why was there such a prompt official denunciation of the Helsinki warning as a hoax? Why was nothing done to respond to the clear warning issued to the American government about the terrorist danger to Pan Am? Why was the Jibril story, so convincing at the time, brusquely junked? What is there left of the Maltese connection? Why have the British and US governments refused a proper inquiry, and why will the Libyans not be brought to trial on neutral territory? Why, if its hands are clean on the matter, is the US government holding back information about the bombing of a civilian airliner? Ask all these questions together and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that someone in authority knows the answers, but won't disclose them. On February 16 1990, a group of British relatives, including Martin Cadman, went to the American Embassy in London for a meeting with the seven members of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism.

'After we'd had our say,'says Cadman, 'the meeting broke up, and we moved towards the door. As we got there, I found myself talking to two members of the Commission - I think they were Senators. One of them said: 'Your government and our government knows what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you'.' It is hard to imagine a more serious charge, nor one which more requires the most urgent and relentless probing.

John Ashton was the chief researcher on Channel 4 documentary The Maltese Double Cross.
Labels: c-word, libya, lockerbie, paul foot

Trickypop

Thank you for taking the time to post that.

All of it is totally irrelevant. The investigation and trial are not at issue here. That was a matter for an appeal, not clemency. What's at issue is letting convicted mass murdering terrorists go free. That and whether the UK's government can be trusted to keep its promises even to governments of countries it likes to believe in its own deluded way Britain has a special relation with. Clearly it can't.

Scotch-git;

That's what I want President Obama to say;....Scotch....GIT! and take the rest of your fellow Brits with you...for 189 days.

As I said, trickypop, thanks for that.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Post 56 complained about (yet again) and reinstated (yet again.)

#61, #63

Marcus,

It was nothing offensive, I assure you; merely a link to a Jerry Reed song.

I thought it funny.

The mods thought it a breach of copyright.

Go figure.......

Marcus, your post 54 ranks amongst the most sickening pieces of claptrap I've ever read. You justify the My Lai massacre with "the soldiers were scared and angry." They raped, mutilated and murdered a village full of people and then you ask where is my compassion for these beasts?

You then call Iran/Contra a "strictly internal affair." Is Iran in America? Were the Contras operating in America? (They certainly did their training there!!)

The most hopeful thing about the present row about Megrahi is that blog sites and newspaper letters' pages are filled with ordinary people who are angry at the utter hypocrisy of your country. The more you lot bleat about Megrahi, the more the world focuses its attention on your appalling track record. That has to be a good thing for the planet.

rjb;

Clearly you have never been in a war. I don't think you have any understanding of history. Clearly you have no understanding of the nature of the war between the USSR and what passes for the civilized world we live in and what was at stake. Clearly you have no understanding of the war between Islamic terrorism and what passes for the civilized world either. It is pointless for me to aruge with you about what you do not know or understand. Then know this. There has never been a war fought by anyone in which atrocities on both sides haven't been committed. But how many nations punish their own soldiers for what their own governmnt and the world call crimes of war? Name one? Perhaps Israel. I didn't say the massacre was excusible, I said it was understandable under the circumstances and that there were mitigating factors that argued for a less then severe sentence. The Viet Cong were anything but boyscouts.

Speaking about war crimes, has the commander of the British war ship that allowed the Iranian navy, if you can even call it a Navy board his ship and take fifteen British soldiers prisoner/hostage without a shot being fired to prevent it ever faced a court marshal? It seems to me that was a crime against the British nation especially since at least some of those servicemen and women were conscripts and not there out of choice.

I expect Congress to pass one of those resolutions condemning the Scottish government for its actions but without any effective actions of its own to demonstrate that there are real consequences to nations that exceed defined boundries beyond which they cannot go in their relations with the US no matter how close they think those relations are, it will be just that many more meaningless words.

Marcus,

I know I'm stupid and need to learn a lot more. But please go easy on me. Here are some of the people who went to school with me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUO6AnH61BE

Scotch-git

Hmmmmm. You want President Obama to talk about people who drink scotch whisky then ? Whatever for ????? I assume you really meant to say Scotts Git, which would be the correct expression. An all to common mistake.

Hi William, My husband and I were greatly uplifted to read your article on mercy. we feel that Christians of ALL denominations should be pointing out that Christ did away with an eye for an eye and that we should turn the other cheek. We totally agree with you, practicing Christians if they are true to the teachings of Christ should be prepared t o show mercy as you say, better than the terrorist. This isn't being 'soft' it is being true to our faith and I am only surprised our church leaders ( of all denominations) haven't come forward to support Mr MacAskill in his decision.

#70 - donegaldame -

Concerning Christians and "mercy", what are your thoughts on Romans 13:4? This talks about the necessity of a nation operating a justice system: "For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practises evil."

Should we, as Christians, not bother with this? What about "mercy" towards the innocent victims of crime? If you show mercy to the evildoer, you are, by implication, showing a lack of mercy to the victims of that evildoer.

As a Christian I object to the idea of "unconditional forgiveness", when the Bible only talks about forgiveness being conditional on repentance. Some Christians seem to think that we should just be moral and spiritual doormats, open to all kinds of abuse and to never protest at evil and deceit. This is just self-deception and self-abuse. Jesus went to the cross - that is true. He also made a whip and violently drove the moneychangers out of the temple (and I won't even mention the acts of God in the OT!)

LSV

My main problem with the Megrahi case is that I firmly believe him to be innocent. (I also believe Kenny McKaskill and Alex Salmond believe the same.) Although politics will not allow them to say it.

Personally, if I thought Megrahi was the mass murderer, I am not sure that I would so quickly support his release, and thats taking into account Donegaldames post and the concept of mercy.

I dont think - outside God - there exists such a thing as unconditional mercy. It couldnt work.

LSV

I realise that you didn't ask me, but such are the risks we run on the www dot!

Yes a nation ought to do justice. This however does not exclude the possibility of mercy.

No we as Christians ought not to act with a lack of concern for justice or evil.

Mercy is not shown towards the innocent, the innocent are innocent and do not need it. And when the innocent suffer it is an injustice. But your question raises again what I raised in post 1, "The complication, of course, arises when we ask if it is possible to be both just and merciful, can we prevent injustice in showing grace?"

Conditional forgiveness isn't mercy, it a merited reward in recognition of doing the right thing.

Read William's last two paragraphs again.

Scandalous, isn't it!

Whether or not the particular decision in this case was or was not mercy, is another matter.

rjb #68

Now you know why the majority of them elected Barack Obama to be our President.

Yes MAII, I'm also beginning to change my mind on Megrahi. I think he was actually guilty... in a Guantanamo Bay kinda way.

#73 - petermorrow -

"Conditional forgiveness isn't mercy, it a merited reward in recognition of doing the right thing."

I can understand what you are saying, but it depends how we define "conditional". This word is often used to denote any action on the part of man, even the choice to accept a free gift. But there is a qualitative difference between a "work", for which one deserves to be paid, and the active willingness to receive a gift. It is absurd that when someone holds out his hand to receive a gift, the gift is then paid to him as a wage to reward him for stretching out his hand! But this is the implication of categorising the action of "receiving" as a "work" which deserves a reward.

But what if someone rejects the gift? Should it be forced on that person? Not according to the Bible. So therefore the reality of grace is conditional on someone being willing to receive it, and it is clear that a willingness to receive the grace and mercy of God involves "repentance". Thus "repentance" is a kind of "condition", but not in a meritorious sense.

There is an interesting, albeit disturbing, book called "Ungodly Fear" by Stephen Parsons. It is really a collection of true stories of abuse within the Christian church. One of these stories is titled: "Responding to the Problem of Sexual Violence" and concerns a woman called Rita (presumably not her real name) who was tricked by the pastor of a church into going on a long drive with him into the countryside where he raped her. While they were in the middle of nowhere he forced her to make an oath on the Bible that she would tell no one about what had happened, and, of course, since she was dependent on him to get her home, she felt she had no choice but to do this. This "oath" prevented her from going to the police about the incident and telling anyone for a few days (she was clearly in a traumatised state and wasn't thinking clearly enough to work out that this coerced oath had nothing to do with God). Eventually she shared her problem with other "Christians" in her fellowship and the almost universal reaction was "You just have to forgive this pastor and move on". Most "Christians" (and I again use inverted commas quite deliberately) she encountered started blaming her for the fact she was raped and were frankly living in denial. This pressure to just "unconditionally forgive" the disgusting and godless creature who did this to her nearly drove her to suicide.

My view is that this concept of forgiveness has nothing to do with God at all. It is not true forgiveness but an act of condoning evil, and therefore is evil.

This is why I do not accept the concept of "unconditional forgiveness". It is not a biblical concept, and if it were, then why is the Bible full of God's judgment?

Ref 71
Although your question is not directed at me, I felt that I should respond. I hope you don't mind. Having read the verse in Romans, it is not clear that Paul is referring to governmental authorities but is, more than likely, referring to the ruling authorities within the Church. It appears that early Christians needed to be more committed to living the Gospel than would be required by church leaders today. That’s not to say that the requirements have changed but rather men have diluted the standards. We no longer are required to live the teachings of Jesus such as found in the Sermon on the Mount or the teachings of James. Faith is enough for most.
Verse 6 is not referring to Kings, rulers or governments. They are not God’s ministers. I believe that Paul is telling the Roman Saints that they must be subject to their ecclesiastical leaders. Those who taught the Gospel were legal administrators who taught the doctrines of Christ and performed ordinances such as baptism, conferring the Holy Ghost, Lord’s Supper and so on.
As those with faith in Jesus it is important that we understand the scriptures with an unsullied perception. So, we should be concerned what the scriptures are telling us. But we need to be sure what they are really saying. My understanding is that as a victim of crime I should forgive those that have wronged me. Jesus, when he was on the cross, set me and us all an example when he said, referring to his torturers, mockers and murderers, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”. He reminded us that the second commandment is like onto the first. For, we cannot really love God if we don’t love our neighbours. And who are our neighbours? Well, Jesus told us the parable of the Good Samaritan. We all know it. To ensure we got the message He counselled us in the Sermon on the Mount saying, “But this I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:...” Matt. 5:44,45.
As victims, although we offer forgiveness, we cannot forgive a single sin. Only God can do that based on the wrong-doer repenting.
But if we are expected to love the wrong-doer and forgive them unconditionally, it is for at least four reasons. Firstly, the sinner is God’s child as well and He loves them as much as He loves you. Secondly, it grieves God that His child is lost or in the process of being lost to Him and He does not want you being equally unjust to that person. Thirdly, God wants you to become more and more like Him who has perfect love. Lastly, He doesn’t want you building up resentment toward that person and destroying your own spirituality. As I see it, when I forgive someone who wrongs me, it does not let them escape the consequence of that wrongdoing but it let me escape it. When we show mercy we are being Godlike.
The Bible does not just talk about forgiveness being conditional on repentance. You need to read it again.
With regards, ‘VIOLENTLY driving out the money changers’, there are a few things you should know. In Matthew, Mark and Luke it talks about Jesus going up to the temple with the masses who were hailing Him as a prophet. It mentions that the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers were overturned. It doesn’t say that He was VIOLENT. This has been a myth perpetrated a bit like that of the ‘three wise men’. Jesus never, ever lost his temper. Even the first time He cleansed the temple he made a whip of SMALL cords. Did He use this on those that were defiling the temple? Off course, not. He used the cords to drive out the animals, the way a farmer would. He must have sat placidly for a while plaiting the cords; hardly the behaviour of a violent person. Pouring out the money of the money-changers and overturning their tables in no way implies that He was in a frenzy. This was something that could be done in a composed manner. Read how he told the dove sellers, “take these things hence”. In no way did He harm man or beast.
Jesus, in Matthew, describes the mark of a person who will be numbered among His sheep when He returns. In 25:36 He says, “...I was sick and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came onto me” and when He is asked when this was done, He will reply, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (v40)
It’s important to have an eternal perspective when considering what you misunderstand about the God of the Old Testament.
In conclusion, I know the way Jesus would want us to treat a man with a terminal illness who is in jail – much in the same way you would like to be treated in a similar situation.

#77 - puretruthseeker -

I don't quite know how you justify your interpretation of Romans 13 - especially considering that verse 6 talks about paying taxes - a clear reference to the civil authorities.

In the example I gave in message 76 concerning the Christian who was raped by a church leader - do you think that someone in her position should not go to the police and seek to have the wrongdoer prosecuted?

Is that your idea of "forgiveness"? And suppose she just "forgave and forgot", do you think that the love of God has been manifested in this situation when this same man, who has got away with his crime, goes and rapes another innocent person? A very strange view of love, in my view!

Do you think that Jesus Christ has any relationship at all with the God of the Old Testament, who most definitely was "violent" in judgement? Need I quote the many passages which reveal this?

And do you think that the Apostle Paul was being "forgiving" when he said in Galatians that anyone who preaches any other gospel than the one he preached should be "accursed"?

Do you think that the book of Revelation reveals a God of unconditional forgiveness? Revelation 14:10 and 21:8, for example?

It is true that God loves all people and desires all people to be saved. But that love is not some kind of New Age "oneness" concept with no moral content at all. "Love" actually means something. It has a moral content, and therefore it judges those who reject its moral content. Therefore there is a "condition" attached to the operation of the love of God.

I just cannot see how it is possible to read the Bible and not accept this.

#77 -

"Jesus never, ever lost his temper. ... He must have sat placidly... "

One other thing further to my last comment...

You talk about myths. Here's another one: the myth of "gentle Jesus meek and mild".

Perhaps you would like to read Matthew chapter 23. OK, it may be true that Jesus "never lost his temper" in the sense that he was out of control, but Jesus most certainly did express great anger. He insulted the Scribes and the Pharisees with the following words:

SERPENTS
BROOD OF VIPERS
SONS OF HELL
HYPOCRITES
BLIND GUIDES
WHITEWASHED TOMBS WITH DEAD MEN'S BONES INSIDE

Sorry to use upper case letters, but I have to "shout" to get across to you the feel of what Jesus said. Jesus was NOT and is NOT the placid, meek, push-over, "anything goes and I'll just smile and forgive you", insipid, morally irresponsible, "couldn't give a hoot about the victims" type person that so many Christians are deluded into thinking he is!

Oh dear, I seem to have lost my temper...

Can compassion be angry, or can anger be compassionate?

What if anger is an indicator of what we really care about? What if anger is a major energy behind serious engagement with all that thwarts the will of God for people? What if the decision not to be angry is the trait of someone who doesn't know or care about God's deep and amazing grace?

What if anger is the expression of love against all that is unloving?

I will tell you how I justify my interpretation of Romans 13 – the clue is in the introduction, “Let every soul be subject to the HIGHER POWERS...” (emphasis added). Now as far as I’m concerned there is no higher power than is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. None. There is also a problem with translations as I’m sure you appreciate. In my version of the Bible, it says tribute rather than taxes. Unfortunately, we do not have the exact words of Paul and the exact meaning; therefore, we must seek to understand the scriptures firstly by praying fervently for the Holy Ghost to open our understanding. Secondly, we must remain unbiased. Thirdly, we must allow ourselves to be taught. This works for me. Therefore, I believe it may be referring to tithes.

Regarding the rape, I think the woman should go to the police and have the incident investigated and if there is a case the law can prosecute. But I feel that, difficult though it may be, she should pray for that individual and in doing so, rid her heart of any hatred toward that person. In this way she will be able to forget quicker the horror that was inflicted on her and her life will be less affected thereafter. The alternative is to ruin her life with hatred and thoughts of revenge etc.

This is why we are counselled to forgive. God, as our maker, has provided us with instructions that will help us achieve happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. Let’s not rationalise those instructions. Let us have faith in them. If we exercise faith in them we will come to know they are true. Not so strange a view of love unless you are unaware of the words of Jesus.

Do I think that Jesus has any relationship with the God of the Old Testament? Why, Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. Jesus is Jehovah; His Father is Elohim whom He works under the direction of. You don’t need to quote me any scriptures as I’m well acquainted with them. However, you do need to understand that when a ‘people’ have gone as far away from God that there is no turning back, that people are ‘ripe’ to have their lives terminated as they have established their ‘reward’ and their removal from the earth is for the greater good. God does not hurt for selfish reasons but for the sake of righteousness.

When you read such verses as Paul saying such things do not read them with some ‘born-again’ preachers voice booming the words but as being delivered to a baby that is being gently rocked to sleep. Then you will understand how these words were meant to sound to us. Nevertheless, Paul did say that anybody who preaches another gospel should be accursed because they draw away those less strong and less committed; and they cause confusion which twarts the gospel of Jesus. Remember, the worth of souls is great in the sight of the Lord. Those who preach another gospel will be accursed. Whereas, those who have been fooled, by them, will receive mercy. Paul does not hate those people he refers to, neither does he not forgive them, “for they know not what they do”.

God never changes. As we must live by, “every word of God”, we must try to square all of Gods word to be able to come to know Him. When you think of wrath you may have this image of someone angry, fuming, shouting, swearing and so on. When I view God’s wrath, I do not see this image. Rather, I see the sad part of God with tears in his eyes having to do something that He knows is just; but which hurts Him because He loves those that have been disobedient and had not heeded Him who knew better.

Part of Revelations 14 talks about the difference between those that have strived to obey and those who were totally disobedient. The disobedient will have to pay their own price, whereas those who repented of their sin and who, through their faith and the grace of God benefitted through the atonement of Jesus will enjoy their rest. In 14:11 it says, figuratively, the smoke of their torment will rise up for ever and ever but it doesn’t say their punishment will be forever. In 21:8 it talks about a second death which those who have been disobedient will “suffer”. What could this second death be referring to? Well, it is after the books have been opened and all have been, “judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works”. To me the first death is separation of the body from the spirit.

Jesus overcame death, through His death and resurrection, and so all mankind will benefit as a free gift of God and not be dismembered throughout all eternity. The second death that it refers to here is the separation of us from God. Only those who have accepted the Saviours atonement will benefit. Those who ignored the Saviours atonement will suffer the second death – cut off from the presence of God. However, at this stage all punishments will have been served and all mankind will live forever in a state that merits their adherence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who have been faithful will live in the presence of God and enjoy the existence that He does. Those who have not been faithful will not live in His presence but will be content, nevertheless, with their environment.

Reading over your words again, I need to point out that you cannot say Jesus was sinless and then accuse Him of being violent.
Also, you seem to forget about the Sermon on the Mount.
You forget about the attitude of Jesus when facing His tormentors while on the cross.
You forget about the Good Samaritan parable.
You forget about loving your enemies.
You forget about putting yourself in the position of Megrahi.
I could be forgiven for thinking that you are not a Christian at all.

Finally, You need to understand what love means. God told us to love our enemies because He does. Love is an eternal principal which has always been and will always be. God loves each of us and if He ever stopped He would cease to be God. He loves Hitler. He loves Fred West. He loves me. He loves you. He loves Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. I cannot see how it is possible to read the Bible and not accept this.

the god bothers are taking over the world, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

be back when they are gone.

Ref 79 logica_sine_vanitate

My post Ref 81 is in response to your post Ref 78

With regards the attitude of Jesus in the temple. If you were as angry as you claim Jesus was, would you be able to make a whip in a temper? How long would it take? Instead of a whip you may end up with a fan.

I will never stop viewing Jesus as meek. Re-read these words in your everyday voice.
SERPENTS
BROOD OF VIPERS
SONS OF HELL
HYPOCRITES
BLIND GUIDES
WHITEWASHED TOMBS WITH DEAD MEN'S BONES INSIDE
Don’t they come out like, “serpents, brood of vipers,...”
If you are a naturally angry person, try whispering them and you may get an idea how they were delivered. You see, it is your bias that thinks Jesus is being less than meek.

You don’t have to “shout” to get across to me what Jesus said, I know. What I also know is that your Jesus is different from the one I know and love. He is not a push-over, He is not anything-goes, He is not insipid, He is not morally irresponsible and He is not, couldn’t-give-a-hoot about victims, I agree. But He is placid and He is meek and He is just, merciful and forgiving. And, He never, ever lost His temper. He asked us to be like Him.

I hope you have recovered.

Ref 80 Auntjason
Anger is a valid emotion that even the most righteous possesses. The problem with anger is in the way it is expressed. Anger does not excuse us from being curteous, calm, controlled, etc. When our anger gives way to unrighteousness it becomes a sin. It upsets a law of Heaven. It flies in the face of God. Thus, we need to repent.

As I see it, the demands of justice have already been met in this case. For instance, he has been apprehended, tried and found guilty (that's if he really was, but assuming he was). He was sentenced to remain in jail for a long time. His victims (in this case the relatives) must have felt to some degree that justice had been served. It would be hoped that over time that those victims had come to terms with what happened. A new consideration has arose that now needs consideration. Thats is, he has very little earhtly time to live.

As this man is about to die, as we are told, should we continue to detain him and, if necessary, keep him alive even by artificial means until his sentence is complete? Would this satisfy the demands of justice? Should we deprive him of medication and treatment, thus advancing his demise until he dies detained in a brick box of our choosing? Would this satisfy the demands of justice?

When Jesus went into the Garden to take upon Him the sins of the world, did HE not take upon Himself the full sentence for every sin committed to that time and every sin thereafter?

We are told He was in an agony, as i have described earlier, and was for quite some time given that His disciples fell asleep a number of times. So, was the demands of justice satisfied in His case? Well, they had to be or else Jesus has not paid the price for the sins of the world and hence, He could not be the Saviour. However, they were met and He is the Saviour.

To listen to some "christian" comments on this blog and other media, I think that if such people had their way, Jesus would still be in the Garden.

PNJ

recently read the book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. Quite an interesting read, and it provides a very good argument that rape in humans is an evolved feature. It makes me wonder why there is so much opposition to this idea (even in academic circles).

The two authors disagree on whether rape is more likely to be an adaptation or a by-product of some other adaptation(s), and the evidence they present is quite inconclusive in this matter. But it the evidence is quite strong that it is an evolved behavior.

Here's a basic outline of the argument:
1. We are an evolved species, therefore everything about us is a result of evolution.
2. Of the four evolutionary mechanisms, only an adaptation or a by-product of an adaptation can account for behaviors that are both relatively common in a species and high in cost. Rape is high in cost, ergo it is either an adaptation or a by-product.
3. Women have specific psychological adaptations in response to rape (specifically the psychological pain involved), indicating that rape has occurred relatively consistently for thousands of generations.
4. Our nearest relatives, the other great apes, have been observed to rape.

Is genetic determinism compassionate?

evoape why dont you just say whatever it is you want to say.

Puretruthseeker,

Post 85:

PTS Said:

"When Jesus went into the Garden to take upon Him the sins of the world, did HE not take upon Himself the full sentence for every sin committed to that time and every sin thereafter?"
Is it not true he loves the elect and endures the reprobate? *see ROM 9*
So you think Christ died for the sins of Megrahi and Hitler?
Why would he atone for their sins, if he *knew* they would be lost?

"I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours" (John 17:9b).

PNJ

Is genetic determinism compassionate?

What do you mean?

evoape you should ask auntjason puretruthseeker or logica_sine_vanitate they will know.

Have you read Dawkins on the selfish gene?
Gentic determinism is related to this.
Compassionate evoultionary determinism can it be said to have compassion.

PNJ

It's more relavant to a women.

auntjason

Is genetic determinism compassionate?

Evoape said:

Is genetic determinism compassionate?

In regards to rape you mean?

That is an oxymoron, how can evolution be compassionate.
There is nothing compassionate about natural selection in regards to rape, in fact compassion can not really exsist.
Gentic determinism is a monstrous thought, and evoultion is the theatre
in which it operates.
It's not a very nice thing to say evoape, that a women is raped because our primates done it for survival.

So what your saying is those less evolved ie rapists act this way because their gentics are lagging behind the more superior in society.

Is genetic determinism compassionate?

The question does not even make sense compassion does not exsist in genetic determinism.

So my answer is NO

puretruthseeker

Post 81, paragraph 2, you say, "she should pray for that individual and in doing so, rid her heart of any hatred toward that person.

And she's going to do that, how?


And now I'm about to click the 'Post Comment' button, and then regret it.

#81 - puretruthseeker -

"Finally, You need to understand what love means. God told us to love our enemies because He does. Love is an eternal principal which has always been and will always be. God loves each of us and if He ever stopped He would cease to be God. He loves Hitler. He loves Fred West. He loves me. He loves you. He loves Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. I cannot see how it is possible to read the Bible and not accept this."

Puretruthseeker - please quote one comment that I have made which in any way suggests that I do not believe that God is love and that He loves His enemies - or that I do not understand what love means.

You say that God loves Hitler. Yes, I agree. That is why Hitler will be tormented for all eternity because the reality of the love of God is something which (I assume from the record of history) he hates. Love is a cruel flame to those who reject it. "It is a fearful thing to fall INTO the hands of the living God" (note that the Scripture says "into" not "out of" - so the whole idea of hell being a place without God is nonsense). The God of everlasting love is torment to those who reject that love. No amount of God loving the unrepentant person will diminish their torment, since that person has failed to fulfil the condition God laid down for his or her salvation, which is repentance. This is an irrefutably biblical doctrine.

All I have said is that love has a moral content - any problems with that? There are consequences to rejecting that moral content which result in the judgment of God - do you agree with that or not?? Therefore the love of God itself has within itself judgement (if that were not the case it would not have a moral content). If all we are supposed to do is unconditionally forgive people without there being any kind of reciprocal remorse or repentance, then "love" simply condones evil, and is therefore meaningless.

You seem to suggest that I am bitter against people I am refusing to forgive. But this kind of "forgiveness" to resolve personal stress is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a concept of forgiveness which undermines justice - the kind of forgiveness that Rita in the story I mentioned was being encouraged by fellow Christians to exercise towards the man who raped her. In reality they couldn't cope with what she had gone through and were just hiding behind the doctrine of forgiveness as a way of fobbing her off - this is a view she actually discerns in relating her story. I agree with her completely.

This glib and crass attitude of expecting her to get over her bitterness and hurt (almost immediately after the abuse) by just "forgiving" is the kind of evasion that so many Christians seem to engage in. Some Christians seem to have a simple answer for every problem, as a way of avoiding real issues. Sorry, mate, but I live in the real world - as did the Lord Jesus Christ, and you cannot just hide behind a simple principle of forgiveness to ride roughshod over other people's hurts, pains and distress. These things have to be worked through with great understanding and sensitivity. Anything else is just a nonchalant way of avoiding having to really "love" other people. Some people do have great hurts and bitterness as a result of abuse, and the answer is to spend time dealing with these issues rather than just holding someone at arm's length and preaching at them (in whatever tone of voice - preferably not mealy-mouthed) about some superficial concept of forgiveness. Of course there is a true understanding of forgiveness rooted in the love of God which deals properly with evil. Never does true godly forgiveness treat evil - and the personal hurts that evil causes - in a glib manner.

Now are you really saying that I do not understand "love" or "the (costly) love of God"? Are you really suggesting that, in order to be a true Christian, I must believe in a concept of love which effectively condones evil - or at least treats it lightly and without the appropriate justice and anger ("be angry and do not sin", as the Scripture says)?

You can question my Christianity to your heart's content if you like. I have learnt from contributing on this blog that I am utterly powerless to change what goes on "between the ears" of other people. You go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe. I am more concerned about what God thinks than your opinion about me (with all due respect!).

#80 - auntjason -

"What if anger is the expression of love against all that is unloving?"

Spot on!

LSV- You have a very different understanding of love - and grace - than I do. You fail to extend the grace of God to men who did evil things like Hitler because you say he deserves to be tormented in eternity. Yet that is precisely why Jesus died in Christian theology, is it not?, to atone for the sins of Hitler and thus justify him in the eyes of God. Grace, as William says above, is an act of compassion which treats someone much more compassionately than they deserve. Jesus took the wrath and justice of God so Hitler didn't have to, right? So why, exactly, is Hitler still going to burn for eternity? Was Jesus' sacrifice not enough to atone for him?

#98 - John_Wright -

I didn't say anything about Hitler "deserving" torment. I am not talking about law, I am talking about reality. What if Hitler enters eternity hating the love of God? What if the very reality of the presence of God is "hell" for someone whose heart is full of evil? This is Hitler's choice. How can God force someone to love or be loved?

What if there are people who, because of their pride, damn themselves? Doesn't the concept of "love" imply freedom and therefore the possibility that it can be rejected? We seem to assume that anyone, no matter how evil or insane, will gladly accept "love". I question that presupposition. Some people are so full of self-love that they could never accept the love of God, irrespective of how much God loves them.

Ref 88 auntjason
Jesus and God the Father love each and every one of us. It appears, like all those who believe in predestination you misconstrue the scriptrures. When it says, “For God so loved the world ...” He did not say, “For God so loved the Elect...” Those whom Are predestined are those such as Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, Elisha, John the Baptist Abraham, Jacob, Israel and many people whom He knew from before this world was. It doesn’t mean that He hates the rest of us. I concede that in v13 it is written, “...Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. And it is true that the Greek word has a similar meaning to the one we use for hate. However, if you take the trouble you will find that Paul is quoting a phrase from Malachi 1:3. Here the word translated from Hebrew has a variety of shades. They include, “rejection”, “strong displeasure”, or more commonly, “loving less than”.
I don’t really want to get into a debate about predestination but I will refer to a few of many scriptures that speak of the Saviours’ sacrifice as universal.
I John 2:2 states, “He was a propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”
1 Tim. 2:3-4 states, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”
2 Peter 3:9 states, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repent.
Yes I believe that Jesus suffered for the sins of Hitler, Megrahi and every person who has ever lived. It wasn’t a matter of atoning for the sins of some He had to atone for the sins of us all.
In John 17, Jesus is praying, what has become known as the “great intercessory prayer”. It was a specific prayer for the Apostles and the Saints. We cannot conclude from it that He doesn’t love all and that His sacrifice doesn’t covers all.