LONDON: Scotland’s first minister has refused to be drawn on whether he supports a public inquiry into the 1988 bombing of a passenger plane blamed on Libyan intelligence officials.
The downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killed 270 people and remains by far the most deadly terror attack on British soil.
Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset Ali Al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for his role in the plot to place the bomb on board the flight. Al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, always insisted he was innocent and doubts have been raised about his conviction.
A television series released last week in the UK, which tells the story of the investigation by one of the victim’s fathers, has renewed interest in the case, as has an upcoming court case in the US of the alleged bomb maker, the Libyan Abu Agila Masud.
A member of the Scottish Parliament, Christine Grahame, asked First Minister John Swinney on Thursday if he supported a UK inquiry into the bombing given the “remaining concerns for some, including myself, about the credibility of the conviction” of Al-Megrahi.
She also highlighted what she described as the resistance of the UK Government to releasing relevant documents in relation to the bombing, the Daily Record reported.
Swinney said that while there was a criminal case underway in the US, “I would prefer not to speculate on possible inquiries.”
Al-Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted for the attack and there has been no public inquiry in the UK.
His trial by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands took place more than 11 years after the bombing and followed long negotiations with the then Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to hand him over along with another suspect.
The recent TV series “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” stars British actor Colin Firth as Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed on the flight as it flew from London Heathrow to New York City four days before Christmas.
Swire believes that Al-Megrahi, who died in 2012 three years after being released on compassionate grounds, was innocent.
Two-thirds of the victims of the bombing were American and 11 residents in the town of Lockerbie were killed when sections of the aircraft fell on residential areas.
