Solcitor Mike Dailly has criticsed Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill for politicising the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

In an exclusive column for the Firm, Dailly also attacks the Minister's description of Megrahi's cancer diagnosis as 'sentence imposed from a higher power, which Dailly says lacked sensitivity to cancer sufferers.

"While our law makes provision for the release of prisoners on compassionate grounds it’s a political decision whether to do so. Professor Alan Miller is right to call for an impartial tribunal to ensure that such decisions are no longer political," Dailly says.

"Despite the claims that Kenny MacAskill was exercising a ‘quasi-judicial’ function, the decision to release Mr Al-Megrahi was not made in judicial language. If it had been it may have been difficult to fault. After all, section 3 of Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 gives the Scottish Ministers power to release a prisoner on licence if they believe there are ‘compassionate grounds’. But Mr MacAskill’s language went far beyond section 3.

"He used this case to make a political speech to the world. A speech about the ‘Government of Scotland’ and its independence; a speech which picked a fight with the UK Government on a premature application for prisoner transfer; a speech which conflated the legal test of ‘compassionate grounds’ with nationalist propaganda asserting compassion as a defining characteristic of Scots and Scotland.

"This episode shows us why politics and judicial decision-making are dangerous bed fellows. Some media commentators have suggested Mr MacAskill’s religious reference was a play to a US audience. Whatever it was, it was a serious lack of judgment to talk about a ‘sentence imposed by a higher power’ in the context of a terminal illness. What does this say to people dying from cancer?"

Dailly's full blog can be read here.