• Dossier gives SNP chance to deflect criticism
By, Severin Carrell
Buried inside the 156 pages of closely-typed official correspondence, memos and minutes which detail the tortuous negotiations on the release of the Lockerbie bomber is a short paragraph which has ruined the recess for one of Gordon Brown's junior ministers.
In the minutes of a meeting between senior Scottish government officials and a delegation of Libyans are nine lines which put the prime minister at the centre of one of the most intense diplomatic rows between the UK and United States governments of recent times: was it right to free the man convicted of one of the worst terrorist attacks against US citizens?
It is the question Brown has repeatedly and studiously avoided because, according to a Libyan minister's account which then junior Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell has refused to deny, the prime minister and his justice secretary, Jack Straw, agreed that Abdelbasset al Megrahi should be sent home to die.
In March the Libyan Europe minister Abdulati Alobidi told Scottish officials that, in February, Rammell had disclosed during a visit to Tripoli that "neither the prime minister nor the foreign secretary would want Mr Megrahi to pass away in prison".
The Libyans had repeatedly warned that allowing Megrahi, his body riven by cancer, to die in Greenock prison would be "catastrophic" for UK-Libyan relations. Scottish officials were warned the Arab world would see it as a "form of death sentence" for a man many claim is innocent of the bombing.
These lines tie Brown into the most controversial act yet of any devolved government in Edinburgh: the early release of a former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the worst terrorist attack on British soil: the deaths of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
The decision has been called "vile", "a disgrace" and "just horrible" by relatives of the 169 US citizens killed when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up 35,000 feet above the small Scottish market town of Lockerbie, four days before Christmas in 1988.
Caught in the centre of the maelstrom stood Kenny MacAskill, a dry and undramatic former defence lawyer and nationalist hardliner who is now Scottish justice secretary.
It was "my decision and my decision alone" he repeatedly told the Scottish parliament when it reconvened in emergency session last week to discuss the Megrahi affair.
And, he told MSPs, "I will live with the consequences."
One of the consequences was being on the receiving end of a furious call from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state and former senator for New York. She knew the families of the 35 Syracuse university students flying home for Christmas who died in the attack.
Brown and the Labour government in London seemed to agree. They were happy to let MacAskill and Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland, stand alone to defend the most damaging decision yet taken by Scotland's first nationalist administration.
The prime minister has been repeatedly pressed by David Cameron, the Tory leader, and other opposition leaders to openly declare his view. All Brown would say was he was "repulsed" and "angered" by the jubilant celebrations which greeted Megrahi's return to Tripoli on 20 August.
It was not his place, the prime minister added, to comment on a decision taken by a devolved government in Edinburgh. Whitehall sources suggested Labour was happy to leave a Scottish National party administration reeling; others wondered whether Brown might privately agree that releasing Megrahi was correct.
The controversy has been fuelled by allegations – repeatedly denied by senior ministers – that Brown connived in Megrahi's release to further the UK's substantial economic interests in Libya. A letter leaked to the Sunday Times at the weekend appeared to confirm those suspicions.
As UK ministers were helping negotiate lucrative oil and trade deals for British firms such as BP and Shell, it appeared Straw had given in to unrelenting Libyan pressure to sign a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) which would allow Megrahi to be repatriated, to serve the rest of his sentence in a Tripoli jail, as it was in the UK's "overwhelming" national interest. This was "terrorists for trade", said Labour's critics.
On Sunday Straw insisted again the conspiracy theories were wrong. The Libyans were aggrieved, he said, that the Scottish government wanted Megrahi to be explicitly excluded from the PTA. Tripoli said this was discriminatory; they wanted the same treaty as every other state which had signed a transfer treaty with the UK.
And, as the documents released by the UK and Scottish governments confirm, the Libyans were repeatedly told that releasing Megrahi had nothing to do with the UK government in London: it was solely and wholly a Scottish government decision.
But the Libyans did not need to be told: they knew the PTA was effectively dead as soon as it was signed. Salmond had been furious about the agreement since the day it was brokered by Tony Blair in person with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, in his "deal in the desert" in 2007. It was highly improbable a Scottish nationalist leader would use Labour legislation designed to smooth the way for a UK trade deal to free their man.
Salmond's disclosure of the Megrahi papers has repaid Brown for his reluctance to talk. As they released their thick dossier of 86 documents online, SNP officials were quick to point to the memo citing Rammell's indiscretion.
This is Salmond's "get out of jail" card. Until 4pm yesterday afternoon, and the release of their dossier on Megrahi, his government had faced losing a significant vote in the Scottish parliament tomorrow on the Megrahi decision.
Opposition parties were united in condemning his release. Labour now faces having Rammell's words read back by a grinning Salmond.
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