megrahi

Correspondence with Johann Hari concerning his article about Megrahi...

Dear Johann
You may be interested, if you don't know it already, in Gareth Peirce's analysis of the Megrahi case at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/gareth-peirce/the-framing-of-al-megrahi. I know you mention in your article that 'there are some serious commentators who argue that Megrahi was framed', but it seems fairly clear that you don't go along with that. I'd be interested to know how you feel confident enough to dismiss it - which is effectively what you do by referring to Megrahi as 'a convicted terrorist - the worst in modern British history'. (You also say that 'Megrahi was sent home to Triploli to be greeted by cheering crowds after serving eleven days for each person murdered'.)

I also think that for those few people who still don't acknowledge that Iraq was about oil (and surely they're relatively few by now, aren't they??) I'm not sure that what I understand to be your main argument will be all that convincing. You seem just to be saying that Blair is unscrupulous (which we knew), that he was prepared to trade a convicted terrorist for oil, therefore he must have been prepared to go to war for oil. (A simplification, of course, of your words, but isn't that the essence?). In a way, I think that by linking this single example of Blair's duplicity and self-interest to the Iraq war, you are almost less likely to convince detractors: what is important in the case of Iraq (and indeed Megrahi) is surely the context, including the history of US and British actions in the Middle East, rather than the intentions and actions of one individual.

If one does accept that Megrahi was almost certainly framed, then it seems to me that there are far more important issues than those addressed in your article. These include: