New Statesman Scotland
The decision by Lord (Andrew) Hardie to quit his job as Lord Advocate and make himself High Court judge (at an enhanced wage), a few weeks before the Lockerbie trial is due to begin, has not gone down well. This diary has a passing acquaintance with some of the families - British and American - who lost relatives at Lockerbie; they are aghast at Hardie's move. The Americans in particular cannot understand why the man who was to lead the prosecution - in what will be the first major trial of the 21st century - wants to back out. Some of them are very angry; others are dismayed. All feel somehow let down by Scots law. "Just what the hell is going on over there?" is a frequently asked question.
If only we knew. Last week's debate at Holyrood over Hardie's hasty exit generated more heat than light. The First Minister, Donald Dewar, and his deputy, Jim Wallace, were plainly uncomfortable, but they could offer little in the way of information. Opposition MSPs were plainly narked but got nowhere.
But the whole affair has raised the obvious questions - just how good is the Crown's case against the two Libyans? And did Hardie jump ship to avoid having to present it? Hardie himself went on the record (to the Scotsman) saying that such speculation was hurtful and that if he had thought the Crown's case was wobbly he would have "pulled the plug" on it long ago.
Well, maybe. But some of the families have been trying to win justice for the Lockerbie victims ever since that terrible night in December 1988, and not all are convinced that the Libyans had anything to do with it.
Some are convinced that the bombing of Pan Am 103 was a revenge attack by the Iranians for the downing of an Iranair jetliner by the United States missile cruiser Vincennes in July 1988, and that the device that blew apart Pan Am 103 was smuggled into the jet's cargo hold at Heathrow, not at Frankfurt.
If that argument can be stood up, it makes a nonsense of the US-led campaign against Libya and, of course, the legal case against the two Libyans who are now under lock and key at Camp Zeist.
Does Hardie know something that the rest of us do not?
The newspaper headline of the century so far must have been in the Scottish edition of the Sun. It was over the paper's report of the 3-1 humbling of the mighty Celtic by Inverness Caledonian Thistle. It read: "Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious." Every now and then, the red-tops demonstrate a panache that the broadsheets never match. This diary heard a bunch of youngsters (Hearts supporters, every one) singing the headline on the top of an Edinburgh bus. If Julie Andrews ever decides to pitch in with a recording, Celtic are doomed.
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