Keep It Quiet, Do

But they did not keep it quiet. Should that come as a surprise? Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown solicited a promise from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi that the unauspicious return of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing would not result in a tumultuously jubilant home-coming. To avoid embarrassment, don't you know.

To side-step recriminations, accusations. However, Colonel Gaddafi had other fish to fry, and fry them he did. Another resounding victory for the Arab way. The deliberate mass murder of 270 people in a terrorist act is shuffled aside as irrelevant history; an unfortunate event, but these things do happen.

Much as the Israeli release of the Lebanese Druze Samir Kuntar who murdered four Israelis, two of them infants resulted in disquieting jubilation. The Palestinian Authority lauded him as a patriot, in Lebanon he was feted joyfully on his release, and granted an award by Iran as a hero. His exploits worshipped by Palestinians.

So why expect Libya to act differently on the release of one of their own who helped plan and execute mass murder? On the orders of his own government?

That Colonel Gaddafi sent a jet and his son Seif al-Islam to escort Mr. al-Megrahi back to Libya was not a signal of what more was to come confers intellectual idiocy on the compassionate Scottish Minister of Justice Kenny MacAskill, along with the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

There is, it appears, nothing quite like Scottish compassion. Compassion in this particular instance, might move government to ensure that adequate medical treatment be given Mr. al-Megrahi while in a prison hospital to ease his way toward death from cancer. In the interests of a trade conspiracy however, other plans were set in motion.

Which is infinitely more merciful than the fate suffered by the passengers of Pan Am Flight 103, and the unfortunates who died on the ground. But, as Mr. MacAskill pointed out, Scotland's standard of decency is not to be confused with that of the murderer's and his government. We know that because it is asserted in such an undeniable manner.

Best to overlook the inconveniently contradictory statements made so casually yet triumphantly by both Muammar Gaddafi and son Seif al-Islam, both attesting to the Libyans' incessant canvassing on behalf of Mr. al-Megrahi's release. And oil and gas contracts conditional on that release.

There is as much honour among thieves as there is between governments, irrespective of their political stripe.