Shameful jail death cover-up goes right to the very top
There are times in politics when you have to pick a side.
Under normal circumstances, there would be nothing remarkable about a justice secretary identifying heavily with prison officers following an altercation with an inmate.
There is nothing remotely normal about the scandal unfolding following the death at HMP Saughton of Allan Marshall.
Given the horrific contents of the CCTV footage of Mr Marshall’s last conscious moments, it’s easy to understand why the SPS went to such desperate measures to try to prevent publication.
So, understandable. But completely inexcusable. Far worse, though, was Humza Yousaf ’s complicity in that decision.
Just when it appeared that it couldn’t get any worse, Mr Yousaf released the contents of his letter to the chair of Holyrood’s Justice Committee, Margaret Mitchell.
The letter was released late on Friday afternoon, the optimum time of the week to bury unwanted news and stifle coverage. The recommendations can be neatly summed up as a bit of meaningless window dressing, some distance put between the Justice Secretary and the Lord Advocate and some casual smearing of the victim.
Anyone who has read Sheriff Gordon Liddle’s determination in full wil l real ise that Mr Marshall was troubled, challenging, frightened and vulnerable.
His treatment inside a Scottish institution was abominable and the CCTV footage disturbing and nauseating.
Mr Yousaf has firmly planted his f lag on the side of an institution and individuals whose integrity and competence have been called severely into question by no less an authority than a respected Scottish sheriff.
If he is to get away with it, he’ll need a huge dollop of the luck which has been with him for much of his political career.
It is to be hoped that he and his boss Nicola Sturgeon get the most severe grilling on the failures which have left Mr Marshall’s family so bereft.
They should also be interrogated over their hostile and futile attempt to halt this newspaper’s coverage of a public interest story and to disrupt our production.
What this scandal has exposed is an institutional cover- up. And it’s now an institutional cover-up which goes to the very top.
Like all cover-ups, it will unravel. It might not happen quickly but it will happen.
Again, it will probably take the efforts and sheer will of a family already devastated by loss. That fact alone is our criminal justice system’s enduring shame.
It is to be hoped that Mr Yousaf and his boss get the most severe grilling on these failures