All quite irrelevant really. The Guildford Four were released on appeal and are deemed innocent. Megrahi, on the other hand, hasn't appealed and remains as a guilty convicted criminal.
Exactly, either Megrahi is guilty and so, as a mass murderer, he does not merit any compassion or he is innocent, and so he should have been freed by a successful appeal, not by compassion.
Four more bodies were driven though Wootten Basett on Thursday and two more British soldiers were killed on the same day fighting, allegedly, to prevent terrorism on the streets of Britain. On the same day, a convicted terrorist gets released on compassionate grounds. What kind of message does that send out?
I wonder though that if instead two-thirds of the victims were Scottish rather than American, the minority Scottish Government would've made the same decision? I suspect not.