THE QUALITY OF MERCY AND A MAN, WE BRITISH, SHOULD BE PROUD OF

I watched Channel 4 News on Thursday evening and listened closely to what The Scottish Justice Secretary had to say when being questioned about releasing Megrahi, the only man convicted for the Lockerbie Bombing.

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As he talked of compassion and the fact that Megrahi was being released to return to his family to die, I felt proud to be British.

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The ensuing howls of rage from the USA were to be expected but let us pause and consider for a moment the nature of USA Governments and their actions. This is a country that executes its citizens, often after years on Death Rows, electrocuting, gassing, injecting or shooting them. It is a country that kidnaps 'suspects' and transports them around the world to various sordid prisons and tortures them. It is a country that holds foreign nationals in in-humane conditions for years without trial or due legal process. It is a country that for years allowed the IRA to raise millions of dollars to fund weapons and explosives used by terrorists to kill and maim British soldiers and British citizens in Northern Ireland and throughout the UK. Mrs Clinton even accompanied her husband to N Ireland and welcomed the premature release of hundreds of convicted terrorists, many who were psychopaths, as part of the 'Peace Process'.

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I do not believe a man like Kenny MacAskill, was motivated by pressure from Westminster or from his own First Minister to release Megrahi in some sort of sordid trade deal. MacAskill has always been his own man and I believe his claim that nothing other than compassion, which is an integral part of The Scottish Judicial system, motivated him to allow Megrahi to return home to Libya to die.

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I am surprised at David Cameron's present position on this matter. It does him no credit. I hope that Brown continues to maintain a dignified silence on the issue on the grounds that it was a decision by a Scottish Justice Secretary.

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We should be proud today that we have a man of principle like Kenny Macaskill in our political system and that in the face of predictable condemnation from a barbaric and uncivilised nation that the USA has become, he at least understood the meaning of these words from The Merchant of Venice:

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"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:"