Lew Rockwell on the Freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi

[I]n the US today, most people seemed to freak out, right along with cable TV, at Scotland’s freeing of a dying prisoner. Even if he blew up that jetliner–a horrific crime–what is to be served by keeping him in jail? Many Libyans and others think he was a patsy at worst, and therefore cheered his freeing. If they thought he was guilty, they were wrong to cheer, as Cuban-Americans were wrong to cheer the man who blew up a Cuban airliner, as Americans were wrong to cheer the men who dropped firebombs and atombombs from a great height on unresisting cities. But is prison the answer for elderly or terminally ill bombers? For anyone? Why isn’t restitution, on the old Germanic pattern, a possibility, rather than taxing the victims to pay off the prison keepers?

Above, the first voice of reason on the subject I've yet heard — Prisons of Evil. (Another interesting point: "Historian Martin Van Creveld shows that public executions were not ended in Europe for 'humanitarian' reasons (as if!), but because the people assumed that anyone being ceremonially killed by the government was a good guy.")

I understand that the release of this man is nothing to celebrate, but it's also nothing to get puffed up with moral indignation about. He'll soon be dead and making an account for his life, or is it that we no longer believe that?