In a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus, the UK and United States governments, joined by the fledgling administration in Libya, have pledged to uncover the truth about Lockerbie (Lockerbie disaster:

25th anniversary, News, December 22).

This collective resolve, however, may have been derailed in its infancy by a ruling last week by a High Court judge in England. In a case brought by a Libyan dissident, abducted and tortured when rendered to Tripoli in 2004 as part of a joint MI6-CIA operation, the judge - according to reports - instructed the plaintiff to abandon his quest to sue both MI6 and the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on the grounds that to pursue it would damage Britain's relationship with the US and therefore the "national interest".

If this same principle of "state doctrine" superseding the criminal law of the land was also applicable in May 2000 when the trial - under Scots law - began at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands of the two suspects rendered by Colonel Gaddafi, it is no wonder any attempt to obtain a safe conviction, albeit in the absence of a jury, was doomed to failure.

The United Nations observer at the trial described the verdict as "arbitrary, even irrational" and said: "Proper judicial procedure is simply impossible if political interests and intelligence services from whatever side, succeed in interfering with the actual conduct of a court."

It would seem that then, as now, the financial and geopolitical interests of the Western powers, and in particular those of the US, continue to preclude the pursuit of justice.

Joan S Laverie

Edinburgh