The Lockerbie judgment made by a Scottish court in the Netherlands, constitutes a milestone in international law. The terrorist act which caused the death of the 259 passengers on Pan Am flight 103, and 11 people on the ground, was not only one of the most callous mass murders in recent history, it was planned in Libya, executed in Germany and reached its deadly climax in Scotland.
With such a complicated background, it was a major achievement for the trial to take place and for a verdict to be reached. That one suspect has been found guilty and another set free as an innocent man, has led to speculation on how such a politically convenient result might have been achieved. Such conjecture fails, however, to take into account the Scottish judiciary's record of independence and probity. It would, all the same, be naive in the extreme to believe that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the man found guilty yesterday, acted completely on his own, without assistance from any other person, in planning and carrying out the murders.
The United States and the United Kingdom have already indicated that they oppose the lifting of sanctions on Libya and will use their vetoes as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to block any moves in that direction.
Spain has already called for a lifting of the sanctions which were suspended in 1999 when Libya finally complied with demands to hand over the suspects for trial. The Spanish position is not based on this specific incident but rather on an opposition in principle to the use of sanctions.
In order to free itself from penalties imposed upon it by the United Nations, Libya should, according to the UK, pay compensation to the victims of the outrage and fulfil other conditions. Even in the event of UN sanctions being lifted, the US - through Secretary of State Gen Colin Powell - has indicated that it will continue with its own unilateral measures against Libya. Few would have expected the first major foreign policy initiative of the Bush administration to be a softening of its attitude to Muamar Gadafy.
Ireland has indicated that its position as a Security Council member will be based on a study of the extent of Libya's compliance with the United Nations' conditions and, in this respect, may be closer to the UK on the issue.
The US Justice Department statement that the Scottish court had required a "high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt" and that the verdict of not guilty with respect to the second suspect was not an affirmation that he was innocent of the crime charged, is a cause of some concern. It appears to run counter to the presumption of innocence upon which the freedom of the individual in most democracies is based. Scots law provides for a verdict of "not proven" which would fit perfectly with the Justice Department's claim. The court did not return such a verdict.