Anglican Mainstream

By N T Wright, for Washington Post

Scotland freed the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber last week so he could die at home in Libya. "Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown," a Scottish official said. Did Scotland do the right thing? Should we have any mercy for mass murderers who are terminally ill?

This is one of those questions where a transatlantic viewpoint may be quite different from what you hear elsewhere. Since I’m about to leave home for a four-month sabbatical in America I guess I’m feeling a bit transatlantic already (and won’t be commenting again, most likely, until January) . . .

Let me first say that one of my closest friends lost two of his closest friends in the Pan Am jet and I remember vividly the anguished phone calls as he dashed up to Lockerbie to help identify bodies and property. I am not about to minimize the horror and appalling criminality of the bombing. 

I haven’t fully made up my mind about the release of the man convicted but I sense that the reaction in America may not fully understand how many people here see things.

What people in America may not realize is this.

1. There is a widespread opinion in the UK that the man in question was put up as a fall guy for various reasons and actually had nothing to do with the Pan Am flight. This opinion is not based on hearsay or guesswork but on the continued strong representations which have been made from various quarters about evidence that wasn’t presented, and about various factors which led up to the finger being pointed at Libya rather than, say, Syria or other sources of terrorism. I know the decision to send the man home wasn’t based on a retrial or the consideration of such evidence, but we have had that put forward by serious reporters over quite a long time, creating a climate in which many, perhaps the majority in the UK, really do believe that the conviction was, at best, not proven. There was quite a shrewd article in our of our papers today saying that the real shame about his sending back is that there should have been a retrial with the new evidence and he might have been cleared.

2. Many people in the UK see the reaction in the U.S. as being typical U.S. anti-Arab and particularly anti-Libya reaction. Because we are conditioned to be a bit worried about U.S. knee-jerk pro-Israel attitudes we tend to distance ourselves from that kind of position. Please note, I am NOT saying any of this is particularly significant in terms of the actual decision, just that it is the context within which the debate is going on. Many in the UK have been horrified, too, by the ongoing sagas about Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay and so on, and in consequence do not like being told by America how to treat prisoners. This may be illogical but it’s the mood at the moment. I know that most Americans do not like being told by Brits how to do things either; that comes with the territory ever since George Washington vs King George III. So be it.

3. We are also in odd territory when it comes to jurisdiction. Many have thought that it’s strange that a man who, if he committed a crime, did so by planting a bomb a long way away, killing people many of whom were from the States, should be held in Scotland just because that’s where the plane came down.

4. The British courts have recently released one of our long-term serious criminals who is not far from death. His crime was nothing like mass murder, but it was nasty and brutal and there was strong public opinion against him and against his ever being released, but our system eventually decided that clemency was the right thing. Again, this isn’t particularly a parallel or anything, just a straw in the wind about different beliefs and attitudes. (We have plenty who would say he should have rotted to death in jail, but plenty, not just lily-livered liberals either, who don’t see that as an approach that a truly civilized country should take.)

5. In particular, the fact that we haven’t had the death penalty in this country for 50 years or so does, I think, condition our popular mind to think rather differently about criminals from how some people sometimes think in the USA (I’m hedging here because obviously you can’t generalize, but the outcry in the U.S. over this case shows a very marked difference of general mood).

6. There is at the moment considerable doubt, and a lot of cynicism, in the UK, about the motives of the Scottish government and indeed of Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, etc. Most people suspect that there are business deals coming out of this though having to be kept secret just now. I abominate that if it’s so, but I note that many other countries have done similar things in the past, perhaps even the U.S.? Who am I to say?

All this is simply a way of saying, ‘We are coming from very different places on this, and that needs to be taken into account as we have the debate’. It isn’t saying ’so that decides the debate’.

I stress, I haven’t actually made up my mind about that.

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