The trouble with 'justice.'

The last chapter in the saga of the release of Megrahi was played out last night to a mixed bag of opinion and judgement. The only man to be convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing was freed on compassionate grounds to live out the last months of his life at home and the terminally ill former Libyan intelligence officer was received home to Tripoli to a hero's welcome.

The sequence of events leading up to his release has seen outraged families of American victims threaten to boycott Scottish products and anger from the Obama administration at what they see as an insult to the 270 victims who were killed in the flight as the bomb detonated flying over the Scottish town.

The reaction in the UK has been slightly more muted with question marks over Megrahi's original conviction leaving families of the British victims slightly more philosphical about his release, querying, as many of them are, whether the right man was in prison in the first place. There has been an audible silence from Brown's goverment over what they are portraying as simply a Scottish justice decision.

According to Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's justice minister, the decision to release Megrahi befits the 'humanity,' of the Scottish people, and is a decision which duly reflects the beliefs and character of the people over which his party, the SNP, govern.

However, there is clearly more at play here than a wish by MacAskill to portray a soft and bonnie Scotland. The continued protestations of innocence by Megrahi and his supporters since his conviction eight years ago as well as his appeals for the sentence to be over-turned, has fed into a growing belief in some quarters that he was nothing more than a pawn in the bigger field of American-British-Libyan relations.

The recent Scottish-Libyan prison transfer deal aside, Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds, it was not a prisoner transfer. Therefore the requirement for all running criminal cases, appeals or otherwise, to be dropped, did not exist. Put simply, he could still be appealing his conviction now even after his release. The fact his present appeal was formally dropped a matter of days before his release last night shows political game playing is still in full flow (not to mention the fact that the ending of his appeal has stopped any chance of new and helpful information coming to light to help the victims' families learn more about the event. )

MacAskill has made a very astute decision in this instance and clearly the negotiating that has been done in the run-up to Megrahi's release has been successful. As all major broadsheets have pointed out in their coverage of this issue, the Scottish government have secured the dropping of his appeal (and therefore saved face if it had been successful), and also flexed some muscle on the world stage, showing Scotland's independence from Westminster and no doubt oiling the wheels of the SNP's bid for total independence from England and Wales.

The existence of such an undercurrent points to side-deals and vested interests being catered to. Here in Northern Ireland that's par for the course especially in such a sensitive area as this. A key tenet in the Good Friday Agreement, after much negotiating, was the early release of prisoners, from both sides of the community and many of whom killed indiscriminately for years during the Troubles.

Also a product of side deals and catering to vested interests, the GFA's early release scheme received a mixed welcome as well. Indeed, the repurcussions of this agreement are still being felt today with UK extradition proceedings for various former IRA men on the run being dropped in light of the fact this early release scheme will likely see them serve minimal amounts of time at Her Majesty's pleasure.

The jury is still out as to the whether this scheme has been a success. Whilst many believe it was an essential ingredient for the peace process the opprobrium it has created is now, in the outworkings of the GFA, proving troublesome.

The feeling of justice not being done over the death of a loved one is harrowing, and is a position which many families in Northern Ireland are in. However, as opponents of the early release scheme in the GFA know only too well and as Megrahi's release has highlighted, the feeling that justice has been reneged upon by the very people in charge of upholding it, is a betrayal that runs deep and one which lasts. The fact that it is done in the name of political expediency compounds such feeling still further.

This sense of betrayal is a severe obstacle to present day Northern Ireland, and one which our future justice minister will have to wrestle with on a daily basis. Will Westminster remain as tight lipped as they did over Megrahi in face of difficult justice issues our administration has to deal with? A cutting of the apron strings and the evident pressure on MacAskill in recent days will hardly have the Alliance party salivating at the prospect of heading this future devolved ministry.

Concepts of justice in post conflict societies and after major acts of terror such as Lockerbie and the Omagh bombing, are not as clear cut as our future justice minister would like. They involve notions of right and wrong, forgiveness and closure. These notions cannot be neatly box ticked in a charged society like the north of Ireland steeped as it is in political acts of violence and all the blurring of moral concepts that accompanies this.

The trouble with 'justice,' is that by it's very nature it can have many guises and a fluid definition but it is also clear cut in the eye of the beholder. Thus American families are outraged by Megrahi's freedom just as British families are in the main, at peace with it. Thus some agreed with the early release of prisoners under the GFA, and some to this day, pursue criminal convictions of former paramilitaries.

Creative ambiguity is often used as a description of the fudging in parts of the peace process here. If the lesson from Lockerbie is anything to go by, we can look forward to some more of this when it comes to Norhern Ireland's new 'Justice' Minister.

UPDATE: So Brown's government has saw fit to strongly condemn the hero's welcome Megrahi received through a statement from Foreign minister David Miliband...but still silence on his actual release. Good timing Gordon, political manouevering if ever I saw it.