Cardinal in attack on US 'vengeance'

In an extraordinary intervention into the row over Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Cardinal Keith O'Brien condemns the American justice system and highlights a "conveyor belt of killing" in its use of the death penalty.

He accuses the American system of being based on "vengeance and retribution" and says he is glad to live in a country where "justice is tempered with mercy". He also likens America's executions to those in China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran and highlights those countries' poor human rights records.

He says the US Senators seeking to question Scottish and British government ministers should instead "direct their gaze inwards".

The outspoken intervention will further fan the row between Britain and the US over the release of Megrahi.

O'Brien's comments, contained in an article in today's Scotland on Sunday, come after US senators revealed plans last month to hold an inquiry into the release of Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity, in which 270 people were killed.

The Cardinal says today he backs the decision by First Minister Alex Salmond not to send his ministers to the US for a Senate hearing, saying that Scottish ministers are answerable to Scots and not to the US. He then turns attention back onto the American system of justice. He writes: "Perhaps the consciences of some Americans, especially members of the US Senate, should be stirred by the ways in which justice is administered in so many of their own states."

Quoting the Bible, he adds: "Perhaps it is time for them to cast out the beam from their own eye before seeking the mote in their brothers'. Perhaps they should direct their gaze inwards, rather than scrutinising the working of the Scottish justice system."

The Cardinal's intervention into the Lockerbie row comes as the first anniversary of the release of Megrahi approaches on 20 August. The former Libyan intelligence officer, who is suffering from prostate cancer, was freed by Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill on compassionate grounds after medical evidence showed he had only three months left to live.

MacAskill rejected his application to be released under a Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the UK Government and Libya. It emerged subsequently that the Libyans had delayed signing an oil deal with BP in order to pressure Megrahi to be included in the agreement, which the then UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw subsequently agreed to.

The revelations last month prompted the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee to launch a hearing into the release. Both MacAskill and Straw were asked to attend, but both declined on the grounds they did not answer to a foreign legislature. The senators have now declared they may visit Scotland later this year to speak to MacAskill and Straw here.

While not explicitly endorsing the decision to release Megrahi, O'Brien offers a clear hint he believes Scottish ministers were right to do just that. "It is in the midst of such inhuman barbarism (shown by Megrahi] that we must act to affirm our own humanity," he writes. "They may plunge to the depths of human conduct but we will not follow them."

He adds: "I believe that only God can forgive and show ultimate compassion to those who commit terrible crimes and I would rather live in a country where justice is tempered by mercy than exist in one where vengeance and retribution are the norm."

The Catholic Church's opposition to the use of the death penalty is long-held. However, the decision by O'Brien to link America's record over the death penalty to its call for an inquiry over Lockerbie was criticised by relatives of those who died last night.

Frank Duggan, spokesman of the Victims of Pan Am 103 group, which represents the views of US relatives, said: "I'm a Catholic and we know that the Catholic Church has long opposed the death penalty. But I think the bishop here should stick to his knitting, and render unto Caeser's what is Caesar's."