A lot has changed since...

1988

As time slips past everything changes one way or another.

Sand dunes shift, rivers change course, mountains crumble.

Process never stops.

The Immovable Object is not long for this world.

Unstoppable forces will bring it to a day of reckoning somehow.

 

When PanAm 103 exploded the political landscape was vastly different to that of today.

At the end of 1988 Irish terrorists were still active in the UK.

Germany was still split East and West,
Yugoslavia could still be thought of as a single entity,

Saddam Hussein's Iraq had not long finished a horrific war with Iran.

Nelson Mandela was still in prison in apartheid South Africa.

The Soviets were still in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Mobile phones were about the same size as a car and just as expensive.
Digital cameras were unheard of.

 At 18 years old I just assumed that this was going to be how the landscape would be for ever.

East v West, Democracy v Tyranny, The Pixies v Jive Bunny.

Nothing much happened in Scotland that would attract the attention of the world at large.

Conservative government policies had swept away the heavy industries

and an extremely unpopular  Poll Tax was about to bet trailled.
We were all a bit pre-occupied with hating the Tories.

Jumbo jets didn't crash on small towns in Scotland.

In my little world terrorists hi-jacked planes and demanded ransoms.

They didn't blow them up mid-air murdering all on board. 

The relatives of those who died on PA103 deserve to know who was responsible.

They deserve to know why it was done,
and by which group

 Does National Security qualify as an oxymoron?

How many laws have to be broken to keep those laws in place?

Whose job is it?

I assume that it's ordinary people,

working in extra-ordinary organisations,

trying their best to sustain their careers.

Oil, narcotics and war are dirty occupations.

The rewards for brokering and managing successful deals are huge.

The successful are often yes men just playing their part,

earning their daily bread and looking after their loved ones. 

It's possible to become very successful by having the wherewithal to know when to play along.

So, two Libyan men were accused of the PA103 bomb plot.

The trial that followed and the judgment handed down should shame 

ideas of Scottish Justice for decades to come.

There's a lot of ground to cover and it's my intention to try, with this blog,

to highlight just what a serious miscarriage of justice has been carried out.

I'll be using many of the sources available on the wwweb, and will try to credit them.

For now, it's safe to say that when the prosecution case relies on two men planting a bomb,

for the court to decide to let one go and imprison the other without being able to say why

then 

that conviction is unsafe.

I'll finish this entry by pointing out for the young 'uns,

or anyone who thinks they know something about Scottish courts, 

that no jury was involved.
This was one of the conditions of the accused,
who felt that with all the publicity that had been generated between the event
and their indictment that they would not receive a fair trial.

I'll take my time putting the entries together,

otherwise your mind will start bouncing around like a demented kangaroo.