Lockerbie (Hansard, 9 January 1996)

§ Q2. Dr. Godman
To ask the Prime Minister if, when he last met President Clinton, they discussed the advisability of continuing with the pursuit of those persons alleged to have committed the murders at Lockerbie in December 1988. [6369]

§ The Prime Minister
On 29 November, I discussed Lockerbie and Libya briefly with President Clinton. Both Britain and the United States remain committed to bringing to justice those responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. The evidence supports the charges against the two accused.

§ Dr. Godman
Why does the Prime Minister place so much emphasis on the need to try such persons in either Scotland or America? Why America? Why does he not tell President Clinton that it makes much better sense to try those individuals at the High Court in Edinburgh or, failing that, at an international tribunal at The Hague? Surely he cannot expect the Libyan authorities to allow those individuals to subject themselves to a television show trial in Washington.

§ The Prime Minister
We are not asking them to. We think that the trial should take place in Scotland. We certainly do not think that it would be desirable—necessarily—for it to take place at The Hague. If, as they have occasionally intimated, the Libyans accept Scottish law and a Scottish judge, I know of no good reason whatsoever why the accused should not appear before a court in Scotland. That is where the crime was committed—above Scotland—and that is where I believe the accused should most properly stand trial. I hope that that will occur and I hope that the accused will be surrendered by the Libyan Government so that justice can be seen to be done.

§ Sir Teddy Taylor
As we have an absolute obligation to the relatives of those who died in that appalling massacre, and as the people of Libya are suffering terribly from the policy of sanctions, what is the argument against passing a simple law in this House that would enable the two accused persons to be tried at The Hague in exactly the same way as other foreign alleged criminals—from Serbia, for example—are being tried? Should we not try to resolve the problem quickly in the interests of those who lost relatives in that appalling carnage?

§ The Prime Minister
I, too, have seen some of the suggestions that the accused should be surrendered for trial in one place or another, but there is no guarantee whatever that the accused would be made available for trial if we went to the trouble of setting up a trial in a third country—at, for example, The Hague.
On a wider but relevant point, I do not think that we ought to allow suspected terrorists to dictate where and how they should be tried. That would imply an acceptance of the accused's assertion that they would not receive a fair trial in Scotland. That is not an assertion that I believe the House should accept.