It is becoming clearer by the day that an independent judicial inquiry is now essential into all the events surrounding the PanAm 103 disaster and the subsequent conviction of one person, the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, for the crime (Letters, July 29).
The pathetic attempt by some US Senators to investigate this deeply complex matter in one afternoon session, by grilling a few foreign politicians on the basis of misguided assumptions and misunderstood facts, underlines how important it now is to have such an inquiry in the United Kingdom (or Scotland) under proper judicial conditions.
If a public inquiry continues to be refused by those in authority, the alternative is to find some way to re-open Megrahi’s second appeal in the Scottish courts. I cannot believe that the Scottish Government and/or the Scottish Justice Department could not devise some way of achieving this if they really wanted to. It pains me to say so, but I believe that the original trial in Camp Zeist, before three High Court judges with no jury, was not the finest hour of our much-vaunted legal system. Its reputation would be repaired, and perhaps enhanced, if it were now seen to provide an opportunity for all the relevant and previously unheard evidence to be reconsidered and tested in court.
Whether that scrutiny is by a public inquiry or a court appeal process, it is imperative that this time both the UK and US governments make available all the relevant documents that they have so far disgracefully refused to disclose, on the spurious grounds of either “national security” or “not in the public interest”. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, after an exhaustive three-year investigation, reported no fewer than six possible reasons for a possible miscarriage of justice, and these must be properly examined and tested judicially.
I am sure there are many like me who want to prove to the world that our country -- Britain and Scotland -- is still a true democracy, where justice is not denied or distorted by those in authority for whatever misguided reason. The families of all the 270 victims of the PanAm atrocity deserve to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Iain A D Mann, Glasgow.
When Senator Menendez reconvenes his “inquiry” into the release of the Megrahi perhaps the first witness he should call should be ex-President George Bush Senior (“US calls off Megrahi inquiry”, The Herald, July 28).
He could ask him why he and Margaret Thatcher stonewalled on a public inquiry into Lockerbie in 1990.
He could also ask him why, when the evidence pointed not to Libya being the perpetrators but to a Palestinian organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who were Syrian proxies paid by Iran to blow up an American airliner in direct revenge for the downing of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes.
Senator Menendez could ask President Bush what event lead the search away from Syria and Iran and on to Libya. The answer I suspect would be former American ally Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
America needed the support of both these countries to help oust Saddam from Kuwait and protect the oil supplies in the Middle-East. The quid-pro-quo would be that their names would be quietly dropped from the Lockerbie investigation. Libya, then a pariah state, was chosen simply for public consumption.
Geo-politics and strategic interests were more important to the US and UK government than revealing the truth about what really happened on PanAm Flight 103.
Alan Hinnrichs, Dundee.
Bullfighting will be seen as a remnant of a bygone barbaric world
Ian Black’s support for bullfighting (Herald, July 29) is disappointing but it unfortunately reflects the attitude of a sector of people in society who feel the need to project a macho image.
Presumably he would have enjoyed the cruelty and death meted out in the Colosseum. His attitude of being “hooked on terror, hooked on death” is unacceptable and should not be encouraged.
Such selfish thrill-seeking with disregard for the feelings of other living beings is a concept which is still repeated often in modern society. Conversely, children who are encouraged to empathise with the feelings of animals grow to be much more caring and conscientious adults.
The inability to empathise with others that experience pain and terror in a similar way to ourselves should not be fostered at any level in our society.
In the future it is likely that bullfighting and other so-called sports such as fox-hunting will be viewed in a similar way to slavery -- remnants of a bygone barbaric world when cruel and uncivilised
behaviour by a thoughtless minority was tolerated without question by the decent majority.
David Walker, Motherwell.
It must be hoped that the decision by Catalonia to outlaw bullfighting will eventually lead to a Spain-wide ban (“Barbarism is banned at last”, The Herald, July 29).
The move, fiercely opposed by traditionalists, is an indication that moods might be changing and that some century-old practices are no longer deemed acceptable in this day and age.
Perhaps the spotlight should also fall upon the whaling activities of Iceland, Norway, Japan and the Faroe Islands, who seem oblivious to the condemnation of other nations about their unnecessary killing of whales.
Bob MacDougall, Stirlingshire.
Dogfighting, harecoursing, foxhunting and now bullfighting; all banned. Does this mean that junior football is now the last remaining legal blood sport in the Western world?
Ken Nicholson, Glasgow.
Proposal to end Asbos shows the Tories are still the nasty party
Another day, another government cut for people living in England.
This time it’s the Asbo. I dare say folk like the current Home Secretary won’t miss it, but then she doesn’t live in an area where householders are tormented by vandals attacking their children, house and car or staging gang fights outside their front door and she’s not a shopkeeper trying to stop her stock being robbed on a daily basis.
According to Theresa May, “communities” must do more to protect themselves. To paraphrase a previous UK prime minister: there’s no such things as “communities” -- and one reason is the damage caused to communities by successive Conservative governments in the 1980s and 90s.
The nasty party? Yes, they are. The Tories have not changed.
Jean Nisbet, Glasgow.
David Cameron’s big mouth has done it again. Any problems he has with how Pakistan is dealing with terrorists should be discussed in private with its government.
I am sure that many people will agree that his lack of diplomacy and respect for elected governments has already shown that he is a poor ambassador for the United Kingdom on foreign visits.
Maggie Jamieson, West Lothian.
The spirit of co-operation that saw concert hall come to fruition
The recent stushie about Glasgow Cultural Enterprises brings to mind the circumstances surrounding its gestation and birth some 20 years ago when the city council was struggling to build the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
The venture was threatened by a silly Treasury ruling that a capital receipt generated by a council (like that then being raised by Glasgow from the lease of the Buchanan Galleries site), could be spent only in the financial year in which the sale or lease was agreed. For the council, spreading the money over the building period was not an option.
Hence the need for a company which could do that.
In the spirit of the time, McGrigor Donald Solicitors helped, free of charge, with the setting up of the company.
Pat Lally chaired its small board on which councillors from both parties served along with Forbes MacPherson of Glasgow Action, whose private sector experience and insights were invaluable.
Their reward was to see the hall completed within budget, on time, up and running during Glasgow’s reign as European City of Culture. No director sought or received a fee.
Steven Hamilton, Milngavie.
A flood of clichés
IT is always amusing to me how clichéd metaphor is used to relate personal experiences to others: BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward seems to have a ready supply of popular phrases: “hit by a bus”; “demonised and vilified”; “get his life back; “life is unfair’; and his luck gets worse as he is now “sent to the Eastern Front”.
Hayward is welcome to join me after he has done his time in Siberia and help by spilling some of his cash reward to sort out my unfair “up the creek without a paddle in a leaking boat” problem.
I suspect a few of us could do with the compensation of a bucket of cash but do have not the opportunity to make the
spectacular mistakes that the present breed of CEOs achieve.
Duncan Comrie,Falkirk.
Refundable ideas
I RECENTLY returned from Finland where the price of all drinks cans or bottles includes a refundable deposit. Supermarkets and shops have automatic machines which take back the empty containers and refund the deposit automatically.
The result is clean streets, a very high rate of recycling and the responsibility for handling the waste placed with those who created it initially.
Could such a simple and effective system ever be adopted in Scotland?
Jim Aitchison, Milngavie.
