A claim by Britain's former counter-terrorism chief that Alex Salmond threw "hissy fits" following the attempted suicide bombing at Glasgow Airport was dismissed as "absolute nonsense" by the Scottish Government last night.
A spokesman for the First Minister told The Herald that the relationship between the UK and Scottish Governments in the wake of the botched terror attack had been good - "fully co-ordinated and fully consensual".
He added that the claim by Andy Hayman, the former Assistant Commissioner of Special Operations at the Metropolitan Police, made in his since-banned book, The Terrorist Hunters, was "absolute nonsense and pitifully so".
The spokesman was responding to Labour calls for Mr Salmond to explain himself.
Jim Sheridan, chairman of the Scottish Labour MPs' group, in whose constituency Glasgow Airport lies, said Mr Hayman's allegations showed up the First Minister's arrogance.
"I am today calling for Alex Salmond to clarify his actions.
"If he put his obsession with appearing on television ahead of a terrorist investigation, then that is unforgivable."
The MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North added: "It is just so hugely arrogant to act like this.
"When dealing with terrorism, politicians need to work together, not try and get one up on each other."
Iain Gray, the Labour leader at Holyrood, branded the FM's alleged actions as "shameful", saying he had behaved in "a disgraceful manner" by seeking to exploit an incident on the scale of the Glasgow Airport attack for his own personal gain.
"It begs the question: is Alex Salmond fit for office? While Strathclyde police behaved in an exemplary manner, Alex Salmond let Scotland down," he added.
In his book, Mr Hayman claimed a "disproportionate amount of time" had to be spent convincing Mr Salmond and Elish Angiolini, the Lord Advocate, that the case should be handled and the suspects tried in London and not in Scotland.
He wrote: "At times, some politicians can't help themselves.
"The lure of getting in the spotlight or having hissy fits over who is the most important simply gets in the way. And frankly, it's despicable."
Mr Hayman's book was withdrawn by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, for legal reasons ahead of publication but only after advance copies were released and part of it was serialised in a newspaper.
However, doubts were cast on his account of relations with the Scottish Government by John Neilson, the Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police who was the officer in charge of the operational response to the attacks.
He said: "I don't know of any political interference that impacted on the investigation."
A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "This bears absolutely no resemblance to events in Scotland that weekend."
A Scottish Government spokesman branded the claims "completely untrue" and noted how decisions on prosecution and liaison with prosecuting authorities in the rest of the UK were matters for the Lord Advocate and not Scottish Ministers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article