In 2003, 15 years after the Dec. 21, 1988, tragedy, it seemed that the government of Moammar Gadhafi finally had taken responsibility, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to compensate the victims’ families. That long-overdue acknowledgement was rendered moot on Thursday, when Mr. Gadhafi’s son accompanied the released prisoner on a private flight back to Tripoli, where hundreds of young Libyans who had been bused to the military airport greeted him with waving Libyan and Scottish flags.
The American system of justice is built on the twin rails of punishment and rehabilitation. It holds that punishment must fit the crime, a premise that concludes that taking a life is so egregious an act that it often warrants taking away a killer’s freedom for life. In Mr. Megrahi’s case, he committed murder 270 times over.
To have him released to a hero’s welcome was salt in a newly fresh wound of hundreds of American families. It was neither just nor merciful.
Read it all.
Post-Gazette Editorial–Unheroic release: The Lockerbie bomber should have stayed in prison
In 2003, 15 years after the Dec. 21, 1988, tragedy, it seemed that the government of Moammar Gadhafi finally had taken responsibility, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to compensate the victims’ families. That long-overdue acknowledgement was rendered moot on Thursday, when Mr. Gadhafi’s son accompanied the released prisoner on a private flight back to Tripoli, where hundreds of young Libyans who had been bused to the military airport greeted him with waving Libyan and Scottish flags.
The American system of justice is built on the twin rails of punishment and rehabilitation. It holds that punishment must fit the crime, a premise that concludes that taking a life is so egregious an act that it often warrants taking away a killer’s freedom for life. In Mr. Megrahi’s case, he committed murder 270 times over.
To have him released to a hero’s welcome was salt in a newly fresh wound of hundreds of American families. It was neither just nor merciful.
Read it all.