So much disinformation coming out of the corporate media about Lockerbie BUT NOT THIS.
UN MONITOR'S BOOK SLAMS 'UNFAIR' SCOTTISH JUDICIAL SYSTEM
SKYE COMPLAINTS OF 'SECRET SOCIETY PARTIALITY' RESPECTED
A world expert on jurisprudence, appointed by Kofi Annan as observer at the Lockerbie hearings, has given encouragement to Skye toll campaigners that they might indeed be right to suggest that Scottish appeal courts are incapable of delivering a fair hearing in their present form.
Professor Hans Kochler's latest book 'Global Justice or Global Revenge', published this week by Springer in both New York and Vienna (ISBN 3-211-00795-4), concludes that the Lockerbie process was intrinsically unfair and that guilt was not established beyond reasonable doubt. The Professor suggests that power politics prevailed over justice whilst criticising the Scottish judicial arrangements in the Lockerbie case as having a de facto lack of independence. He further states:
"What made the doubts about the fairness and impartiality of the Lockerbie proceedings even more serious was a revelation that transpired in the British media ….. the majority of judges of both the trial and appeal courts - as well as leading members of the prosecution and defense teams - are members of a Masonic-type secret society. The so-called Speculative Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1764 supposedly as a kind of "debating club" and has kept its membership secret up to the present day. In connection with another high-profile Scottish lawsuit - the so-called "Skye Bridge toll case"-, politicians and civil rights activists in Scotland and the United Kingdom have raised the question of whether membership of such a secret society is compatible with the independence and impartiality of the judiciary."
Campaigners had hoped that Lord Justice Clerk Gill might have taken the opportunity to clean house when the challenge to possible partiality was raised by Robbie the Pict during a petition hearing in February 2003. Lord Gill, seemingly completely unaware of the new burden on the Court to examine itself in such circumstances, took advantage of Robbie's tactful indicators of examples in potential breach of legal principle and ruled that he had not proved his case!
Meanwhile a paranoid defence and dirty tricks campaign ensued, led by Sir Angus Grossart's Sunday Mirror, in a frenzied attempt to expunge accusations which had not in fact been made. All this from an "innocent debating society" of which Sir Angus Grossart and first Skye Bridge Company chairman Sir Iain Noble (No.1782) are members. That would be nothing in itself but 22 out of 25 reversals in Edinburgh Courts came while Spec members were on the bench. The Minister of Transport responsible for the cocked-up tolls regime is Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, also a Spec member (No.1772), along with Lord Justice General Cullen (No.1702) and 16 of his brother Lords, including the topical Lord Fraser of Carmyllie.
As we fruitlessly emphasised the last time, we are not saying anyone is guilty of anything. As Professor Kochler has kindly recognised, we are only asking the intellectual question "Is such undeclared membership by Judges of a secretive society vulnerable to the 'reasonable suspicion of possible partiality' in a country which would give respect to Human Rights?"
Let public perception be the judge of our judges, as the law now demands.
Scottish Peoples Mission
Old Schoolyard, DUNVEGAN, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Tel: +44 (0) 1470 521 550/E-mail: spm@pictland.freeserve.co.uk
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