Sunday 8 August 2010

Cardinal attacks US over Lockerbie bomber reaction

Megrahi shortly after release 
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released last August
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has made an outspoken attack on the United States over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds.
US lawmakers want Scottish politicians to explain to a Senate committee their decision to release Megrahi.
But the cardinal said ministers should not go crawling to the US like lapdogs.
Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, released Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, after being told that three months was a "reasonable estimate" of his life expectancy.
Vengeance
However, he is still alive after almost a year and the decision continues to provoke anger in the United States, which was home to 189 of the Lockerbie victims.
Cardinal O'Brien said Americans were too fixed on retribution.
He said it was understandable why the families and friends of the 270 people killed on board Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 would want "justice" and "even vengeance".
But in an article for the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, he suggested Americans should "direct their gaze inwards" rather than scrutinise how the Scottish justice system worked.
"They seem to think they have got it right, and I don't think they've got it right, and I don't think most Christians would believe they have got it right either. It's not an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And they really should look to the beam in their own eye rather than thinking what's wrong with us."
He added: "I think the United States government in many, many states - more than half of the states in the United States - they have a culture of vengeance."
He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept "invidious company" with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
He backed the Scottish Government's decision not to give evidence to American senators investigating Megrahi's release.

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