The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and the subsequent trial were more about politics than justice. The UK government was originally convinced that the guilty were members of the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine, based in Syria. Over 12 years later, one of the Libyan intelligence agents, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was convicted and the other let off. Given that the two agents were accused of conspiring together, this verdict looks suspiciously like a compromise.
Nobody is satisfied.
The Daily Telegraph calls for action against Colonel Gaddafi, on the grounds that he must have known about the plot. In the London Evening Standard journalist Paul Foot, who has covered the Lockerbie issue for a decade, calls the trial a 'charade organised and spun by intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic', and says he doubts that the families of the bomb victims will stop campaigning 'until they get some answers'. By pretending that a matter of international politics could be dealt with by three judges under Scottish law in a Dutch court with no jury, the Lockerbie trial has ensured that this issue will never go away. Even those directly affected by the bombing have raised suspicions about the motives behind the trial. But then, for all the UK government's bleating about the bomb victims, this trial was never for their sake.