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Conspiracy theories are like cacti: they flourish when information flows are restricted and are apt to perish under a deluge of facts. So the British government in Westminster and the semi-autonomous Scottish administration in Edinburgh could reasonably have expected the torrent of documents they published on Sept. 1 to kill off the wilder conspiracies surrounding last month's release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. And those documents - letters among Westminster, Edinburgh and Tripoli; minutes of meetings; and reports on everything from al-Megrahi's failing health to the hefty policing costs that would...
...from proving that al-Megrahi's fate was determined solely by the Scottish judicial system that imprisoned him - as politicians in Westminster and Edinburgh have vigorously asserted - or that compassion alone dictated the Libyan's release, the documents suggest a process every bit as murky as conspiracy theorists might have imagined. While the British government made a public show of neutrality on the issue, saying any change in al-Megrahi's status was a matter for Scotland, it turns out that a British minister once gave assurances to Libya that neither Prime Minister Gordon Brown nor his Foreign Secretary, David...
...Libyans that they wanted him released," said Conservative Party leader David Cameron, calling for an inquiry into the affair. Brown angrily rejected that interpretation of events: "On our part, there was no conspiracy, no cover-up, no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances by me to Colonel Gaddafi." (Watch a TIME video with Gordon Brown...
...There may be little an inquiry could discover that cannot be gleaned from the documents, which reveal how Britain's clumsy realpolitik and the ambitions of the nationalist-led Scottish government to assert independence from Westminster led to a messy outcome. On one point at least, conspiracy theorists were wrong: this was never all about oil. Preserving and expanding Britain's commercial interests in Libya was always a part of the equation, but so too was a desire to seal Libya's rehabilitation...
...Libya repeatedly warned Britain of "catastrophic effects" for their relationship if al-Megrahi died in jail - the alarmist phrase also emerges in the minutes of the March 2009 Glasgow meeting. Ministers in Westminster duly conveyed these threats to Edinburgh. Labour and the Scottish Nationalists are fierce opponents. "The British government have a better relationship with [Libyan leader Colonel Muammar] Gaddafi than they do with Scotland," says Ed Owen, a former special adviser to Straw. But Scottish politicians could not ignore the overlap between Scottish and U.K. interests. Instead, they devised a plan to release al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, rather...