Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill has declined to respond to criticisms made by the brother of a man killed in the destruction of Pan Am 103 that he failed to follow proper procedure in disposing of Lockerbie convict Abdelbaset Al Megrahi’s transfer.

Mr MacAskill refused to address criticisms of his handling of the case by Matt Berkely, reported in The Firm yesterday.

However, the Scottish Government Justice Department communications directorate told The Firm that the communications directorate of the Scottish Government disagreed with Mr Berkely.

The communications department provided the remarks quoted below, but stipulated that they were not made by the Justice Minister.

“The Scottish Government strongly opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the UK Government and the Libyan Government. Prior to ratification of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement at Westminster, the UK Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, gave a commitment that in cases where applications were not submitted personally by the prisoner, the prisoner must be given the opportunity to make representations. Therefore Mr Megrahi had the opportunity to make representations, and he chose to do so in person.

“The PTA provided that prisoner transfer could not take place if any legal proceedings were outstanding. Mr MacAskill did not agree to the transfer of Mr Megrahi under the PTA. There is no similar such requirement attached to compassionate release, which Mr MacAskill did grant.

“The decision to drop his appeal was entirely one for Mr Megrahi and his legal team to take.”

The Firm asked for clarification to establish whether the remarks represented a Government statement. The Scottish Government’s head of News Fiona Wilson told The Firm that the comments were from a “spokesperson”, and were not to be attributed to a Government statement and did not represent a stated Government position.

She told The Firm that “in keeping with long standing practice, general responses on policy or factual positions come from a Scottish Government spokesperson.”

The Firm requested the identity of the “spokesperson” on four occasions, but the information was not provided.

Professor Robert Black said that Mr MacAskill made a “grave blunder” by dealing with Megrahi’s compassionate release concurrently with the prisoner transfer application, which may have confused Megrahi into dropping his appeal unnecessarily.

“It is, of course, true that there was absolutely no legal reason why Kenny MacAskill should have decided to deal with the Libyan Government's application for prisoner transfer concurrently with Megrahi's application for compassionate release,” he said.

“This was a grave blunder and the unnecessary linkage gave rise to the problems over abandonment of the appeal and what MacAskill said about abandonment (or was understood by Megrahi to have conveyed) during their meeting in HM Prison Greenock.”