It was interesting to be able to watch the news of the compassionate release of the floridly-named Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, while I was visiting the US this week. I managed to avoid my morbid fascination with Fox, and watch the coverage on CBS instead. They seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the decision was being taken by a judge, whereas in fact Mr Kenny MacAskill is a politician, a member of the Scottish Executive, the Justice Secretary.
I was struck more, though, by the on-screen caption CBS used: it spoke of "leniency", whereas the British news outlets took the official line, that this was an issue of compassion and mercy. Do the two amount to the same thing? For al Megrahi, they seem to; for the people celebrating on the streets of Tripoli, they seem to; for the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, ...
Al Megrahi is guilty before the law. That's not the same thing as saying that he did it: a subsequent appeal might have concluded that he did not. But the due process of the law, to date, finds him guilty. The Scottish Executive would argue that they have followed their own due process - a separate process of compassion - and decided that on the grounds of his imminent demise due to cancer, he should be released.
This creates two tensions: firstly, the British conception of justice may be divergent from the American one: had he been tried under an American jurisdiction, he might well have faced the death penalty. Our conceptions of what constitutes just punishment may differ, and the grounds for early release are certainly different: so it is unsurprising that this release comes as an unpleasant shock to grieving relatives. Secondly, there is a tendency among a significant proportion of the British people to take a more "American" view (in that sense) of justice, which can be at odds with that of our political leaders (though I don't know of any explicit test of public opinion in this particular case).
So where does the path of justice, accompanied by mercy, lie? There is much speculation about political (or trade) expediency surrounding the decision to release this man - but the politicians have denied it, so let us take that at face value for now. The notion of a justice system whose judgement is tempered with mercy seems a good one to retain: after all, whether you follow the God and Father of Jesus Christ, or a set of humanist values, unless you have an excessively relativist outlook, you will tend to believe that a just society is better than the ideal of those who would seem to win through violence. Mercy is lacking in those who would send 270 people to an unexpected death: all the more reason for it to be demonstrated towards those who perpetrate the terror.
But that's easy for me to say: it was not my mother, my daughter, my sister who was murdered. In some Islamic states those who represent the wronged party are able to influence the sentencing and the processes of clemency. That is a tempting notion - but I'm pretty certain al Megrahi would still be in prison if the decision had been in the hands of the victims' relatives. Though sentencing should take account of the victims' distress, it is eventually a function of the community, of the state: if it is a legitimized lynch mob, then we have a problem. [I need to look for a biblical principle here, I think.]
All in all, this is a long-winded way of saying I'm ambivalent about this decision: but the notion of justice tinged with mercy is undoubtedly one to hang on to - for it is divine.
No comments:
Post a Comment