THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The release of the Lockerbie Bomber demonstrates fecklessness, not compassion.
Libya had a plane waiting for terrorist Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi even before Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill had announced the Libyan's release from jail yesterday. Within hours of the announcement, Megrahi, convicted under Scottish law for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in which 270 people were killed, was on his way home, flying safely through the same skies his victims had been blown out of 21 years ago.
In making his announcement of Megrahi's release on "compassionate grounds," Mr. MacAskill intoned that "when such an appalling crime is committed, it is appropriate that a severe sentence be imposed." Imposed, perhaps—but not carried out. Megrahi served less than a third of the 27 year "minimum" demanded in his 2001 life sentence. That works out to 11.6 days in prison for each of his victims, or about 14 days if you count from the time of his 1999 arrest.
Whatever else Megrahi's release is, then, it is not justice. The argument for compassion rests on Megrahi's case of advanced and apparently terminal prostate cancer. We're not sure what "compassion" is owed to a man by a country already too compassionate to apply the death penalty to mass murderers. Nor do we quite understand what Mr. MacAskill intended by his remark that Megrahi may face "a sentence imposed by a higher power." In this world, it makes no small difference to a man whether he ends his days in a foreign prison or in the bosom of his family and country. >>> | Thursday, August 20, 2009
