"Everything about you is how I wanna be
Your freedom comes naturally
Everything about you resonates happiness
Now I won't settle for less

Give me all the peace and joy in your mind"

After agitating everybody, Afenton chimes in to sing a poetry. How typical.

I am left wondering whether there is anything different in this debate. The right wing members are disgusted, angry and coming up with different kinds of punishments to settle some imaginary score that they hold against the so called terrorist. Opinions are a nice thing, to be respected no matter whom they come from. But they remain just that. Opinions!

Can we please have some hard facts and quotes & citings from the actual appeal... some history on this Megrahi guy, so that we can debate those hard facts... lets call out the quoteland jury, and really put Megrahi on trial. Afenton and hope can be the prosecution, but they have to be an intelligent prosecution. I suspect hope can be that, afenton tends to in my mind become a nasty name-calling one... but as there is no judge to say ORDER! ORDER! here, we will all just ignore that and see what he puts forward in terms of intelligent opposition. Mrs Micawber and Asa can be the defense lawyers, and we can be the jury.

What say?

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Janet Mackensie: Perhaps you can help me, your Lordship. Six months, I have applied For my hearing aid and I am still waiting For it.
Judge: My dear madame. Considering the rubbish that is being talked nowadays, you are missing very little.
-- from the movie "Witness for Prosecution" (1957)

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much love, light and laughter,
ananya.

Ah, I'm the agitator. How predictable of you, Ananya. Despite Micawber having failed to follow the rules about quoting, it is I that causes agitation. I mean, either we're supposed to show that we are indeed quoting, or we aren't.

"Otherwise, that's known as plagiarism which can get you banned from Quoteland." Quote from Debate Forum Tutorial. For your information! I'm not particularly bothered about the failure to "make sure that (she) include(d) a reference to that source." BUT I am adamant that she broke the rules (or whatever) by not adding quotation marks. And, of course, no apology! In other words: stuff the rules.

Either I was correct to tell Micawber that she should have made clear that she was quoting, or she didn't need to. I accuse her of not only failing to show she was quoting, I also suggest she was trying to pass of the "interpretation" as her own words. I suggest she meant to mislead. BUT even if she didn't, she still failed to use quotation marks. She then also failed to correct her "mistake" and apologise for "inadvertently" making claims.
But no - you, Ananya, being so thoroughly biased, chose to arrive at the conclusion that I was somehow the agitator; I should simply have allowed rules - very strict and important rules - to have been bipassed. Only someone with extreme bias could arrive at such a conclusion. Needless to say, it was indeed someone with extreme bias that makes the claim.
As for the idea that the result of the trial was somehow based on "opinions"... nonsense! And unless you're suggesting that the Scottish legal system is somehow guilty of law-breaking - and can, of course, prove it - in locking up Megrahi, then we have a legally "convicted mass-murderer". And if we have a "legally convicted mass-murderer", we are... were at a position where that "convicted mass-murderer" should either have been released - legally, I have always agreed - under the misguided idea that this mass-murderer was deserving of our sympathy, or he should have been kept locked up 'til his re-trial. There was no third option that I'm aware of. Therefore, your idea for a Quoteland retrial is nonsensical.
My, uh, poem (you'll notice I used...quotation marks!) is, in fact, a quote (quote? Did I or did I not need to add those rather important and telling comma-type things?) from a Muse track. It was, of course, included, by me, as extreme sarcasm.

Those, Ananya, are the "hard facts", Ananya. Perhaps a little less bias would help. What say? Or perhaps that should be "What say?"!


p.s.
I s'pose you, or someone else within the Q'land inner-circle, could ban me again, despite my not breaking the rules AND another member actually breaking them. Then you could reinstate me, with no apology or admittance of mistake-making, and just go on as though nothing happened! THAT is, and always has been, the problem here, not me. Rules are for the selected few, it seems.

1. There is the 'on the face of it' fact that Scottish judges found for the prosecution.

2. There is the 'what really happened' question that is still hanging over the affair.

There is no argument over the first and, indeed, over the addendum of Megrahi's release.

The 'what really happened' question is possibly up for debate.
Funnily enough, I've just been listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme which alluded to the fact that Truth and Justice do not always go hand in hand.

I'm delighted to see that there may be a UN inquiry into Lockerbie:
"Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the original trial, backs the campaign.
Professor Robert Black, one of the original architects of the trial at Camp Zeist, is also supporting the campaign."

May take a few years and I can only expect an inquiry would find that the verdict was unsafe. Whether anything would be done to the prosecution for withholding evidence or to any governments or government agencies is another matter.

Asa,

It appears that you are getting blindsided by your misunderstanding of the justice system and how it relates to this particular case. Habeas corpus works a little like this:

1. You are innocent until proven guilt by a jury of your peers.

2. If found guilty by a jury of your peers you are then guilty until, upon appeal you are proven innocent.

As a sidenote for a miscarriage of justice to occur, you needn't necessarily be factually innocent, so long as there has been some obstruction or infringement of the normal arrest/investigation/evidence procuedures.

Mr Megrahi was convicted and sentenced by a jury. Whether he is factually innocent or has suffered a miscarriage of justice is besides the point; even upon his release, he is still guilty in the eyes of the law. Nothing has changed legally, but politically (and certainly geographically) he has been granted his freedom.

Empathy and doubt should not be grounds for release. A full appeal or enquiry proving his categorical innocence or some breach of conduct are the only proper means of securing a prisoner's release.

That his release should be granted upon a sparingly used piece of legislation which is invoked by a member of the executive without the need for approval by a legislative body seems strongly to suggest to me that there were other concerns and interests at play here and unfortunately 'justice' has been cast aside in order to fulfill these former aims.

As a final sidenote, while I was at university one of my lecturers founded the UK Innocence Project that voluntarily works with people they believe have been wrongfully convicted. I admit that the channels for appeal are not always as wide as they possibly should be, but Megrahi has always had a lot of support and attracted political interest to open such avenues. If what you say about a UN enquiry is true then I would welcome it, but I would have preferred to see him wait until then, behind bars.

I believe you have misunderstood the justice system and how it relates to this particular case.
There was no jury.

quote:

A full appeal or enquiry proving his categorical innocence or some breach of conduct are the only proper means of securing a prisoner's release.

Sounds like you are criticising the Scottish legal system. Implication is that we have an improper means of securing a prisoner's release.
(Although, as Mrs Micawber has pointed out, there are other countries that have that legislation.)

I fully agree with your next paragraph.