Tuesday, August 30, 2011

First Minister Alex Salmond delivers a master class on interviewing using facts and the truth regarding Al Megrahi situation in Libya

2 comments:

Nikostratos said...

George


Alex Salmond the leader of the snp executive gives an interview about a convicted crim..........so what??? just why does the leader of the snp pontificate on an issue which is in the remit of the snp minister of (in) justice

Anonymous said...

Thanks George.

What a statesman.

It is a master class in taking the facts, presenting them politely, clearly and authoritatively, retaining the dignity that we expect from a First Minister, and without trying, simply by providing a comparison, show the interviewer as petty and sensationalist.

I'm proud that Scotland sent the man home to die. It was the right thing to do. The "three months" was the best estimate that the man would have lived in prison, in a foreign country, with only the drugs that the Scottish National Health Service could provide.

He may have lived longer because he was home; he may have lived longer because he was in a healthier climate; he may have lived longer because he was not in prison and he may have lived longer because Gaddafi provided him with drugs proven to prolong the lives of prostate cancer sufferers.

I suspect that, given the choice Al Megrahi would have preferred to go on living, doing his prison job of teaching English to the Scottish prisoners, rather than have terminal cancer of a particularly unpleasant type. So perhaps the punishment meted out to him is rather worse than he would have suffered. After all, he has in the end suffered the death penalty. And although it wan't the judgement of the Scottish court, it would surely have been the judgement of an American court.

I heard one American lady say that she felt cheated by the Scottish legal system and its compassion, given that he had only served 8 years of his sentence and that that was only x days for each person he killed. All I can say (being somewhat less charitable than Alex) is that he'd have been in prison a good deal shorter time and died more humanely had he been in America.