Here is another reason why I am highly dubious about the claims that the Lockerbie trial was a miscarriage of justice. In the late 1990s, David Shayler left MI5 and blew every secret he could to the press. He worked on the Lockerbie files, however, and insisted that the case was above board. (I should add that Shayler has since become the nuttiest of conspiracy theorists and insists that Jews - or "Zionists" as modern anti-semites say - are everywhere. If even he doesn't believe there is was a conspiracy in the Lockerbie case, then there wasn't.)

Instead of looking at the trial, maybe it is better to keep an eye on the reports about Peter Mandelson  meeting Gaddafi's son in Corfu, who in a pardoy of the dictatorship's leftist rhetoric is likely to succeed his old brute of a father in true monarchical fashion. ("They've given up on socialism in one country and replaced it with socialism in one family," as we used to say of Ceausescu's Romania.)

Although Libya was effectively at war with Britain and America in the 1980s, we are all now allies in the war against radical Islam. In other words, the British establishment may be very keen to get the Libyan out. Gadaffi pere et fils would be happy and Mandy would be happy. Every interest would be satisfied by drawing a veil over the affair, except the interests of justice.