[Mr Dangermouse]

(Original post by derangedyoshi)
For interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

On topic: as others have said, the evidence against him was shaky, and he certainly wasn't the only perpetrator. The law must be compassionate, and while he has had the temerity to outlive his expected time, he hasn't (as far as I'm aware) caused any harm or done any damage since being released.

I also remember seeing something in the Private Eye ages ago about a criminal released on compassionate leave who survived 19 years, and no one kicked up this sort of fuss. Megrahi may have survived longer than we thought he would, but he still had cancer throughout that time, didn't he? He wasn't having a laugh at how he was fit as a fiddle and had tricked those silly Scots.

Ronnie Biggs as well released almost the exact same day as Megrahi, still alive.

[Grey_Fox]

(Original post by comradejrew)
There's a lot of happenstance around it, but it was likely planned by the top level of Libya's version of Mi6, which was led by a bloke called Abdullah Al-Senoussi. I don't know whether they got him or not during the civil war, but I'd think he was a likely candidate.

The attack was also a balls-up, the timer was meant to blow the plane up over the Atlantic so they'd never know that it was a terrorist hit - it was the fact that the plane was held up in Frankfurt that meant it went boom over Lockerbie. There was a bit of speculation that it wasn't the Libyans, but the Iranians, as a retaliation to a US Warship shooting down an Iranian passenger plane. I'm not exactly sure - my History teacher worked for the African Union at one point and is still as he says "pretty chummy with diplomatic types", so I trust his info as being pretty reliable.

You'd be fairly close.

You can add into the mix a bribed star witness (only eye witness) and a falsified and erroneous piece of circuit board evidence (involving more bribes and post-trial sworn statements from key witnesses refuting their previous evidence and admitting to having taken bribes) plus the unexamined break-in to the baggage area at the time.

Whilst the Wail reading mob rejoice, M. Moussa Koussa (his old boss and mentor), who was involved with the Libyan embassy before the WPC shooting incident, almost certainly with the IRA & more than likely Lockerbie, arranged to give up Megrahi & then negotiated his release shortly before BP landed the Libyan oil contracts and shortly after Magrahis second appeal was about to inconveniently get underway.

What happened to Koussa? Well, he was whisked off out of Libya during the fall of the regime, cosy chat with biscuits in a St James gentlemans club before he just went on his way, not a cancer cell to be seen. Odd, isn't it?



The Iranian Airbus shooting the year before followed a long period of tension, and was done by a US warship after it identified an Airbus 300 as an F-14 Tomcat...



So 'rats wasting our oxygen and needing prison' indeed, just got the wrong rat, or at very best, an extremely incidental one.

Woopee

[comradejrew]

(Original post by Grey_Fox)
You'd be fairly close.

You can add into the mix a bribed star witness (only eye witness) and a falsified and erroneous piece of circuit board evidence (involving more bribes and post-trial sworn statements from key witnesses refuting their previous evidence and admitting to having taken bribes) plus the unexamined break-in to the baggage area at the time.

Whilst the Wail reading mob rejoice, M. Moussa Koussa (his old boss and mentor), who was involved with the Libyan embassy before the WPC shooting incident, almost certainly with the IRA & more than likely Lockerbie, arranged to give up Megrahi & then negotiated his release shortly before BP landed the Libyan oil contracts and shortly after Magrahis second appeal was about to inconveniently get underway.

What happened to Koussa? Well, he was whisked off out of Libya during the fall of the regime, cosy chat with biscuits in a St James gentlemans club before he just went on his way, not a cancer cell to be seen. Odd, isn't it?



The Iranian Airbus shooting the year before followed a long period of tension, and was done by a US warship after it identified an Airbus 300 as an F-14 Tomcat...



So 'rats wasting our oxygen and needing prison' indeed, just got the wrong rat, or at very best, an extremely incidental one.

Woopee

Another thing that annoys me is how America reacted to the whole thing, they thought he 'should' have been tried in America. The plane crashed in Renfrewshire, not Rhode Island.

[L i b]

(Original post by comradejrew)
Another thing that annoys me is how America reacted to the whole thing, they thought he 'should' have been tried in America. The plane crashed in Renfrewshire, not Rhode Island.

Lockerbie's in Dumfriesshire...

The last significant plane crash in Renfrewshire was when Rudolf Hess came to visit.

[Cyanohydrin]

(Original post by comradejrew)
Another thing that annoys me is how America reacted to the whole thing, they thought he 'should' have been tried in America. The plane crashed in Renfrewshire, not Rhode Island.

Wasn't as annoying as this campaign they started up...

[thunder_chunky]

(Original post by Cyanohydrin)
Wasn't as annoying as this campaign they started up...

http://rlv.zcache.com/boycott_scotla...7zvecz_400.jpg

Oh delightful. Who was promoting those?

[jameslad]

The guy is innocent.