To the Editor:

“Where, I ask, is the justice?”

With these words, FBI Director Robert Mueller ended his recent letter to Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who was responsible for the release of convicted Lockerbie terrorist and mass murderer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on the grounds of compassion because he has cancer.

I cannot say it any better. Where, indeed, is justice? That scumbag Megrahi and his cohorts methodically murdered 270 innocent people, 17 of whom were fellow employees of mine at Pan Am. Flight 103 was my absolute favorite trip. I flew it many times and even operated it five times that very month of December 1988. As the saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Pan Am’s Atlantic passenger loads dropped to less than 50 percent after that tragedy, and we never recovered. Sometimes we were flying 747s with fewer than 100 passengers and more than 300 empty seats. Not to mention the grief we suffered, the economic impact was devastating. I became a coward, and started to fly to South America whenever I could, avoiding Europe and the Mideast. For the last three years of my career, every time I sat in the cockpit, I imagined that there was a bomb in someone’s suitcase below me in the baggage compartment. Folks, you don’t know what nightmares are.

Where was the Libyan terrorist’s compassion when my 17 friends and 242 others were blown out of the sky that sad and fateful day? Where was his compassion when 11 others on the ground were brutally murdered as the 747 wreckage tumbled onto their quiet little town only four days before Christmas? He has no compassion. He and his fanatical companions will never be satisfied until all the citizens of this planet are either dead or converted to his distorted form of radical Islam.

I hope MacAskill is able to sleep at night now that he has signaled all terrorists that they will be punished for their crimes with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Megrahi returned to Libya as a hero in the minds of his countrymen and their crazy leader, Khadaffi. Where is the justice?

I am making it a personal mission never to buy another drop of scotch whiskey or anything else that is made in Scotland. I urge you to do the same. Let us all send a message to the Scottish people that we strongly disagree with the decision to release Megrahi. Please, I beg you to do the same. Let the scotch whiskey gather dust on the shelves of our ABC stores and in the warehouses. Send them a message that we think convicted terrorists deserve the same level of compassion that they showed their victims. Thank you for sharing my disappointment and disgust. Where is the justice?

Ash Cutchin,

Courtland