Scottish Sovereignty
Americans clearly have a problem with this, which is odd, because they have States with their own soverign laws, within their federal system. When interviewd on the Today programme the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, was impressive, separating with clarity, BP, the Prisoner Exchange Agreement and the decision to release Al Magrahy on compassionate grounds. He pointed up the murky relationship between the exchange agreement and the BP contact, whilst detaching the Scottish government’s decision to release the prisoner. He also made the point that whilst the majority of the American victim families were against release, the majority of British were in favour.
The reason that so many here who have studied the case, including such giants of fair play and compassion as Tam Dalziel who conducted his own extensive enquiry and was convinced of Al Magrahy’s innocence, are unhappy with the original conviction is that in a fair and open trial by jury, based on all the actual rather than contrived evidence, there is little, if any, chance that this conviction would have happened.
It is probably impossible with a crime organised by a State or States, with central planning and organisation, to convict a single individual operating under orders, unless it can be proved that he was instrumental and decisive in the event. A state crime does not lend itself to individual responsibility unless those on trial had political power to direct it.
There is no doubt that there were dividends for the UK from this decision right across the Arab world, which could be enormously helpful in resolving the never ending problem of the Middle East. By identifying the government so closely with the American anger with its lack of mercy (mercy is spontaneous, it is not by its nature tit for tat) Cameron has blown a good deal of this advantage. Yet another foreign policy failure. If anybody is looking for cuts they can go to the FO. We do not need so fancy an echo of Empire when in reality our man is no more than, in effect, a junior minister in the State Department.
I am not really wonderful with English but I line up this really leisurely to read.
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