(This article by Robert P. George originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, August 30th.)
Killer's release demands answersDid U.S. get to weigh in on his fate? Most of the dead were American.
A few days before Christmas in 1988, a charming, brilliant, and strikingly beautiful young American woman boarded Pan Am Flight 103 in London bound for the United States. Her name was Valerie Canady. She was headed home to celebrate the holidays with her mom and dad.
As all the world knows, Pan Am 103 never landed. It was blown apart in the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland, when a bomb planted on the plane by Libyan terrorists exploded. All the passengers were killed. Valerie's body was never recovered. She was seated directly over the bomb. There was literally nothing left of that beautiful girl for the Scottish authorities to send home to her loved ones.
As a lawyer with the firm of Robinson & McElwee in Charleston, W.Va., I represented Valerie's family in the litigation against the Libyan regime. But my relationship with Valerie was deeper than that. She had been my friend since childhood.
My parents and Valerie's parents had been friends from before Valerie and I were born. We grew up in Morgantown, W.Va., where Valerie's father taught chemistry at West Virginia University. Valerie was an only child, and like a sister to me and my four younger brothers.
We shared Valerie's parents' pride in her. She was an outstanding student who graduated from WVU with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. She was an extraordinarily gifted linguist who picked up foreign languages almost effortlessly. She was also an exceptional athlete - outrunning most of her almost-brothers, whether the race was a sprint or a half-marathon. Yet she never tooted her own horn. Her accomplishments spoke for themselves.
After receiving her degree, Valerie won a job with the H.J. Heinz Co., and began her professional life in the company's Pittsburgh headquarters. Admired not only for her abilities, but also for her personal warmth and kindness, she made a great impression on everyone. Having big things in mind for the prodigiously talented young star it had hired, Heinz sent her to England for a stint in its London offices.
This is a sketch of the life of one of the 270 people, 180 of them Americans, who were cruelly murdered by a Libyan terrorist named Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and his coconspirators. Megrahi was tried and convicted for his crimes in a Scottish court. Yet after serving only eight years in prison, he was released this month by the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, and sent back to Libya, a free man. There he received a hero's welcome from a throng that included the son of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Like most Americans, I was shocked and appalled by this decision. It was allegedly made on grounds of "compassion" for a man who is said to be suffering from terminal cancer (albeit a killer who murdered more people than Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and Jack the Ripper - combined). Questions have now arisen, however, as to whether the decision was influenced by other considerations. As British journalist Philip Stephens has written: "No amount of protestation will counter the impression that this was essentially a political decision - that Britain judged it in the national interest, diplomatic and commercial, for Col. Gadhafi to be indulged."
However that may be, anybody who is thinking about whether the decision could possibly be justified should consider its impact on Valerie's parents, William and Loulie Canady, and hundreds if not thousands of other family members of victims.
The Canadys mourn their daughter every day. Indeed, scarcely a waking hour goes by during which they do not think about her. The anguish they suffer - and have suffered for more than 20 years - is nearly unimaginable. Yet their pain, and the pain of other victims' families, was profoundly intensified, first by the decision to release Megrahi, and then by video footage of the killer being welcomed home to Libya.
This alleged act of "compassion" can only be described as an act of cruelty to the Canadys and other families of Megrahi's and Gadhafi's victims. It is true that sometimes justice must be tempered by compassion; but the release of an unrepentant mass murderer after only eight years in prison is a false and misguided compassion. As FBI Director Robert S. Mueller has said, "It makes a mockery of the grief of the families."
Megrahi is now a free man in his native land; we cannot hold him accountable for his crimes. But the people of Britain, as citizens of a democratic nation, can hold their government accountable for releasing him. And we in the United States should demand accountability of our leaders, too.
What did American officials know about the decision to free Megrahi and when did they know it? What, if anything, did our government do to try to prevent it? Remember, 180 of Megrahi's victims were our fellow citizens. President Obama had a right to be informed in advance of what Scotland was planning to do and a duty to do everything in his power diplomatically to prevent this outrage.
Not long ago, the president saw fit to insinuate himself into a dispute between a Harvard professor and a Cambridge, Mass., police officer over a disorderly conduct arrest. It was hardly an issue of national importance. The release by an ally of the murderer of 180 Americans is. If Obama did not pick up the phone and call British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to try to stop the release of Megrahi, then I want to know why he didn't. I hope you want to know, too. |
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