Who really freed Megrahi?

Who really freed the Lockerbie bomber? The question cannot be answered by deliberately looking in the wrong place. And for the fortnight since Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, announced Mr Megrahi’s release that is what journalists have been doing, obsessively.

Reporting with the pack mentality that often misdirects them, British newspapers have tried to prove that Gordon Brown authorised the release. Instead they have demonstrated only that the Prime Minister wanted Megrahi to be transferred to Libya under the prisoner transfer scheme, and that he had no power to make it happen.

Granted, Mr Brown and the British Cabinet desired a result that would have appalled Americans nearly as much as the actual outcome has. But their view did not prevail.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released, not transferred, and his liberation was authorised by the Scottish Executive not the UK Government. The relationships between these tiers of power, and the parties in office in each, are at the root of the confusion afflicting news desks.