Murphy ‘let’s pick up pieces’
SCOTTISH Secretary Jim Murphy has broken his silence over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, condemning Kenny MacAskill for visiting Scotland’s “biggest ever criminal” in prison.
However just like Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he refused to say whether it was the right decision to send cancer-stricken Abdulbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi home to Libya on compassionate grounds.
Mr Murphy said the Scottish Government had handled the release “very badly” and it had damaged the country’s reputation abroad.
“I’ve tried my best to keep out of this because I don’t get involved in the decisions of the Scottish Government on things that are their job,” he said. “I think they handled it very badly and we’ve got to pick up the pieces because there has been damage to Scotland’s reputation.
“A Government minister shouldn’t go to visit a mass murderer and if you go and visit the biggest criminal in our history, then every criminal is waiting for the SNP Justice Minister to come and knock on their cell door for a chat. That was a bad decision. ”
Before Megrahi’s release last month, Mr Murphy called on the SNP to speed up its decision because the delay was becoming “embarrassing”.
Since then, he has only become involved once more to insist there was no pressure from Westminster.
He added that he did not think the American threat to boycott Scotland would come to anything and said: “I think the relationship is deep enough and long enough that it will survive.”