When Abdel Baset al-Megrahi landed in Tripoli following his release from Scotland last week, the world saw a single event in two very different ways. Through the prism of the Western media, Americans saw a terrorist being given a hero's welcome by a country eager to celebrate mass murder. Libyans saw a dying man—believed to be innocent by his countrymen and many others world-wide—being embraced by his family.
The misperception of both the circumstances that led to Mr. Megrahi's release and the reception he received upon his arrival in Libya has reopened painful wounds for the families of those lost in the Lockerbie tragedy. It's also threatened to derail years of progress and newly restored relations between Libya and the West.
While many take Mr. Megrahi's guilt for granted, there is a large and growing body of evidence that casts serious doubt on his conviction and suggests that an innocent man may have been languishing in prison. This is a view shared by many observers—not only in Tripoli, but in Edinburgh, London, New York, Washington and even among many families of the victims of that terrible act. This perspective has been absent from much of the reporting that has surrounded Mr. Megrahi's return.
Hans Koechler, a U.N.-appointed observer at Mr. Megrahi's trial in 2001, called the conviction a "spectacular miscarriage of justice." In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission formally concluded after three years of painstaking inquiry that the conviction of Mr. Megrahi may have been a "miscarriage of justice" in that it rested on evidence that had been discredited. Mr. Megrahi has been pursuing an appeal in order to clear his name. But when he learned of his terminal illness, he gave up this appeal in order to spend his remaining days with his family.
When Mr. Megrahi landed in Tripoli, the reception he was given was not a "hero's welcome for a terrorist," as some have characterized it. Libyans would not regard any man who they believed to have taken 270 innocent lives as a hero. Just the opposite: We would find such a monster to be abhorrent.
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