Final Hours for Brit on Death Row in China

Time may be running out for Akmal Shaikh a Briton convicted of drug smuggling in China. Indeed by the time many of you read this he may already have been executed. I have mixed views on the death penalty. That may seem strange to some and I accept it is. But all my experiences have taught me that all governments kill to some extent or another. As such I can see perhaps cynically the argument for a just authority passing the death penalty after an individual has been tried by a jury of his peers. I mean every day western governments kill in Afghanistan and the UK government hypocritically supports that whilst being against capital punishment. That said I certainly support the calls for Shaikh to be granted clemency. I can never condone the use of capital punishment against drug smugglers. Had Shaikh received a fair trial and been convicted of murder perhaps I would think differently but I'm not decided on capital punishment per se. However I really do not want the Chinese government to kill this man.

Historian Andrew Roberts 'An Inconvenient Truth'- The History of Anglo-Israeli Relations.

Here is the full text of a speech given by historian Andrew Roberts at the annual dinner of the Anglo Israeli Association. Their annual dinner was held last night the 9th December. I have posted this from Melanie Phillip's column in the Spectator. One possible explanation for the Foreign Office's historic attitude could be that reflected in my last post about the PSC's John Sullivan. Simply put many Brits don't like Jews.

You know one way you can test the British people's attitude to Jews? Simply type Stacey Solomon (X factor singer) into Google. The list with the most hits populated by Google as you finish typing reads 'Stacey Solomon Jewish'. Funny ain't it that I don't get anything similar with any other X factor contestant? Read some of the comments about Stacey, most are complimentary the horrid ones though not infrequently come back to one thing. I'll leave that to my readers to find out. Back on topic Andrew Roberts Speech below:

'My Lords, Ladies & Gentlemen,
It’s a great honour to be invited to address you, especially on this the 60th anniversary of AIA, and I’d like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to look at the overall story of the relationship between Britain and Israel, and to try to strip away some of the myths.

Because it seems to me that for all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour’s Declaration of November 1917, promising ‘a National Home for the Jewish People’, it doesn’t mean that Britain has ever been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations. The Declaration itself was at least in part conceived to keep Eastern European and Russian Jews supporting the Great War after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Chaim Weizmann’s preferred wording of ‘a Jewish State’ was turned down by the British Foreign Office. As David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: ‘Britain has made a magnificent gesture … But only the Hebrew people can transform this right into tangible fact: only they, with body and soul, with their strength and capital, must build their National Home and bring about their national redemption.’

Sure enough, at the Versailles Conference and its ancillary meetings up to 1922, although Britain was given the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the Jewish National Home was not established. During the Mandate period there was an observable tension between the CO, which was responsible for administering Palestine and wanted to do so within the terms of the (admittedly self-contradictory) Balfour Declaration, and the FO, which feared that allowing the de facto creation of a Jewish State would alienate Arabs. In 1937 the Peel Commission recommended ending the Mandate and partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with population transfers of 225,000 Arabs from Galilee, an outcome Ben-Gurion said [quote] ‘could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples’. Nonetheless, both the Arabs and the 20th Zionist Congress rejected Peel’s recommendations, to the palpable relief of the Foreign Office, which concentrated its own opposition to it on the basis of its supposed impracticality.

Instead there was the notorious 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine at precisely the period of their greatest need, during the Final Solution. A total upper limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the fateful years 1940-44, a figure that was also intended to cover refugee emergencies. The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938 – the very same day as the Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany – and was approved by Parliament in May 1939, a full two months after Hitler’s occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. The Manchester Guardian described it as ‘a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews’, which in sheer numerical terms was probably an underestimation. Although the Labour Party Conference voted to repeal the White Paper in 1945, the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin – a bitter enemy of Israel - persisted in it, and it was not to be repealed until the day after the State of Israel was proclaimed.

In late April 1948, Bevin ordered that Arab positions in Jaffa needed to be protected from the Jews [quote] ‘at all costs’, and when Israeli independence came the next month, the departing British sometimes handed over vital military and strategic strongpoints to the five invading Arab armies, the most efficient of which, Transjordan’s Arab Legion, was actually commanded by a Briton, Sir John Glubb. And then on New Year’s Eve 1948 the British Government actually issued an ultimatum to Israel threatening war if Israel did not halt its counter-attacks on Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Britain was the only country in the UN that came to Egypt’s aid in this regard.

One can easily see, therefore, why when Brig-Gen Sir Wyndham Deedes set up the Anglo-Israeli Association only weeks after Israel was finally recognized by Britain in 1949 - months after America, Russia and several other states had already done so – it was much-needed. There was still massive resentment over the War of Independence; Israel was considered at best a headache by the FO; and worst of all, unlike her neighbours, she had no oil. Nor did the Suez Crisis much help matters seven years later: the way in which Israel fitted in neatly with British plans to crush Nasser ought to have endeared her to the Foreign Office, but of course it didn’t.
When in May 1967 Nasser announced the blockading of the Straits of Tiran, closing Israel’s commercial lifeline to the east, the guarantors of this international waterway – including Britain – failed to act quickly or decisively, and although Harold Wilson was proud of his pro-Israeli sentiments, his foreign secretary George Brown and the FO certainly did not reciprocate them. Britain compounded its generally lukewarm attitude during the Six Day War by sponsoring Resolution 242 at the end of it, which called on Israel to withdraw [quote] ‘from territories occupied’, in a resolution that was so badly worded by the FO that Arabs and Israelis have been able to argue over its proper meaning ever since.

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 saw even worse bias by the FO in favour of the Arabs and against the Jews. Announcing an arms embargo ‘equally’ between the belligerents, the Heath Government effectively stopped Israel buying spare parts for the IDF’s Centurion tanks, whilst allowing them to be bought by Jordan, the only other country affected, because it was not (officially at least) a belligerent. Egyptian helicopter pilots continued to be trained in Britain, with the foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home lamely telling the Israeli Ambassador that it was better for the pilots to be training in Britain than fighting at the front. Heath even refused to allow American cargo planes taking supplies to Israel to land and refuel at our bases on Cyprus.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher seemed to offer a new warmth to Anglo-Israeli relations. She sat for Finchley, her Methodism chimed well with Jewish values, and she was the most philo-Semitic PM since Churchill, yet even she was stymied by the FO, especially over Intelligence cooperation with Mossad. It’s true that John Major sent a special SAS unit to seek and destroy Iraqi Scud missile batteries targeting Israel during the First Gulf War, but that was largely to remove the danger of Israel retaliating, and thereby perhaps destroying the Arab coalition against Saddam.
After 9/11 Tony Blair seemed to appreciate how Israel was in the very front line in the War against Terror, and he thus bravely refused to condemn Israel’s acts of self-defence in Lebanon, but since then Britain’s contribution to the EU’s strand of negotiating over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been, frankly, pathetic.
One area of policy over which the FO has traditionally held great sway is in the question of Royal Visits.

It is not therefore coincidence that although HMQ has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. Even though Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for sheltering a Jewish family in her Athens home during the Holocaust, was buried on the Mount of Olives, the Duke of Edinburgh was not allowed by the FO to visit her grave until 1994, and then only on a private visit.

"Official visits are organized and taken on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth office," a press officer for the royal family explained when Prince Edward visited Israel recently privately - and a spokesman for the Foreign Office replied that [quote] ‘Israel is not unique" in not having received an official royal visit, because [quote] ‘Many countries have not had an official visit.’

That might be true for Burkino Faso and Chad, but the FO has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the Queen on State visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan & Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.
Perhaps Her Majesty hasn’t been on the throne long enough, at 57 years, for the Foreign Office to get round to allowing her to visit one of the only democracies in the Middle East. At least she could be certain of a warm welcome in Israel, unlike in Morocco where she was kept waiting by the King for three hours in 90 degree heat, or at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda the time before last, where they hadn’t even finished building her hotel.
The true reason of course, is that the Foreign Office has a ban on official Royal visits to Israel, which is even more powerful for its being unwritten and unacknowledged. As an act of delegitimisation of Israel, this effective boycott is quite as serious as other similar acts, such as the academic boycott, and is the direct fault of the FO Arabists.

Which brings us on to Mr Oliver Miles. One of the reasons I’m proud to be an historian is that there are scholars of the integrity and erudition of Prof Sir Martin Gilbert and Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman who also write history. If people as intelligent, wise and incorruptible as they choose to be historians, then it must be an honourable profession. Let me quote to you, therefore, word-for-word, what a former British Ambassador to Libya and Greece, Mr Oliver Miles, wrote in The Independent newspaper less than a fortnight ago, commenting on the composition of the present Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War:
‘Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media. … All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.’

Ladies and gentlemen, if that’s the way that FO Arabists are prepared to express themselves in public, can you imagine the way that they refer to such people as Professors Gilbert and Freedman in private? For the balance that Mr Miles is talking about here is clearly a racial balance, that only a certain quota of Jews should have been allowed on to the Inquiry.
Of course there’s a reason why ‘Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream media’, of course, and that is because it is a disgraceful and disgusting concept even to notice the racial background of such distinguished public servants, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to most people had not Mr Miles made such a point of it.

Because there are 22 ambassadors to Arab countries, and only one to Israel, it is perhaps natural that the FO should tend to be more pro-Arab than pro-Israeli. On occasion there are remarkably good British Ambassadors to Israel – your president, Sir Andrew Burns, was one such in the early 1990s – just as there are on occasion remarkably good Israeli Ambassadors to Britain, indeed we are fortunate to have one at the Embassy today in Ron Prosor. Overall, however, such men are swimming against the tide of an FO assumption that Britain’s relations with Israel ought constantly to be subordinated to her relations with other Middle Eastern states, especially the oil-rich ones, however badly those states behave in terms of human rights abuses, the persecution of Christians, the oppression of women, medieval practices of punishment, and so on.

It seems to me that there is an implicit racism going on here. Jews are expected to behave better, goes the FO thinking, because they are like us. Arabs must not be chastised because they are not. So in warfare, we constantly expect Israel to behave far better than her neighbours, and chastise her quite hypocritically when occasionally under the exigencies of national struggle, she cannot. The problem crosses political parties today, just as it always has. William Hague called for Israel to adopt a proportionate response in its struggle with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, as though proportionate responses ever won any victories against fascists. In the Second World War, the Luftwaffe killed 50,000 Britons in the Blitz, and the Allied response was to kill 600,000 Germans – twelve times the number and hardly a proportionate response, but one that contributed mightily to victory. Who are we therefore to lecture the Israelis on how proportionate their responses should be?
Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would not do placed in the same position?

The population of the United Kingdom of 63 millions is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example entirely at random, Hezbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed 8 patrolmen and kidnapped 2 others, and that summer fired 4,000 Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further 43 civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would not do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire 36,000 rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing 72 British servicemen in an ambush and capturing a further eighteen? I put it to you that there is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. So why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

There has hardly been a single year since Brigadier-General Deedes established AIA in 1949 when a speaker has not been able to say that Israel faced a crisis, and on some occasions – in 1956, 1967, 1973 and especially in the face of the present Iranian nuclear programme today – these were existential. At a time when Barrack Obama appears to be least pro-Israeli president since Eisenhower, the dangers are even more obvious. For there is simply no way that Obama will prevent Ahmadinejad, perhaps Jewry’s most viciously outspoken and dangerous foe since the death of Adolf Hitler, to acquire a nuclear Bomb.

None of us can pretend to know what lies ahead for Israel, but if she decides pre-emptively to strike against such a threat – in the same way that Nelson pre-emptively sank the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen and Churchill pre-emptively sank the Vichy Fleet at Oran – then she can expect nothing but condemnation from the British Foreign Office. She should ignore such criticism, because for all the fine work done by this Association over the past six decades - work that’s clearly needed as much now as ever before – Britain has only ever really been at best a fair-weather friend to Israel.

Although History does not repeat itself, it’s cadences do occasionally rhyme, and if the witness of History is testament to anything it is testament to this:
That in her hopes of averting the threat of a Second Holocaust, only Israel can be relied upon to act decisively in the best interests of the Jews.'

Anti-Semite from the PSC, another example of Britain's growing Anti-Semitism

A sad example of what is growing in Britain today. Anti-Semitism. Listen to what this idiot member of the PSC has to say about Jews in Britain. The PSC held a ‘Christmas Carol Service’ on 01 December at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Tuesday December 1st, starting at 6pm.

The carol concert featured Caryl Churchill, author of the anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children, which demonises Israel and suggests that Israeli parents teach their children to hate Arabs. The leader of the Church, Vicar Simon Perry disgracefully buys into the PSCs propaganda as can be seen he also features in this video. A demonstration was held at the Church by Israel supporters. The man John Sullivan and others from the PSC can be plainly seen along with their views. A typical example, of the alliance that exists between leftists and Islamists. I gave further examples of this dangerous alliance and the resulting anti-Semitism here:

http://amodernlibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/rally-for-hate-and-were-are-not-all.html

If You're a Former Serviceman or Servicewoman express your displeasure at the BNP here...

This is a superb website here. The BNP are seeking to hijack the good name of the British Forces. Numerous veterans and others are speaking out about this on the 'nothing British'website which I have linked to above. The BNP are on Question Time tonight on BBC 1, whatever you think of that I bet it will send Question time's ratings through the roof! I have little to say on the BNP. I don't like them, I consider them to have gained in popularity due in large part to NuLabour and EU policies but that is for another time. I'm heartened to note that the overwhelming majority of servicemen and veterans are opposed to them. For evidence of that look here. The BNP are racial supremacists and unless we make the Army like the Waffen SS we're going against history. For one thing if the Army was to follow BNP like policies and only allow 'white native Britons' to join, we would have missed out on some star recruits such as Talaiasi Labalaba (pictured),Johnson Beharry and of course the Gurkhas. More on Labalaba here. There is an ongoing campaign to get Labalaba's MID upgraded retrospectively to a VC. He only recieved a MID (mention in dispatches) in 1973 due to an official desire to keep the battle he fought in secret. I would like to quickly take this opportunity to wish all serving Gurkhas and others from the Commonwealth in HM Forces all the best. Your bravery is the best possible riposte to the BNP.

Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

The science is contradictory.






Interesting article from the BBC. I am one of those unusual people whose mind is not made up as to whether climate change is man made or not. This article whilst it is obviously not detailed enough to argue either case, does lay out each point of view. Good article and full text below:



This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?


Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly. Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun. But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.


What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores. In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years. So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.


Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling." So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature. But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.


The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new. In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models. In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.


To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years. Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself. So what can we expect in the next few years? Both sides have very different forecasts.
The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998). Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Putin almost says sorry

Wielun, where the Luftwaffe 70 years ago

killed 1000 civilians in a portent

of what was to come.

Good article in the Times about the commemorations in Poland today marking the outbreak of the second world war. Well the commemoration is today if you're Polish, Friday if you're British or French. Americans can wait until December 2011. However if you're Chinese your seventieth commemorations should have started on September 18 2001. Anyway back to the Times, it seems in a relativist sort of way Putin has come close to apologising for the Soviet treatment of Poland and in particular the Soviet/Nazi pact of 1939 that set the stage for world war two. It's hardly surprising the Poles are not too keen on Vladimir's obfuscations. Whilst it has to be borne in mind that the Soviet Union was overwhelmingly responsible for the Nazi defeat, for those areas liberated by the USSR in '45 all it meant was Soviet and not Nazi tyranny. Still I shall not go on, I would just like to express my sympathies for all those who suffered as a consequence of this conflict. Also my admiration for those who fought to defeat Nazi terror.

PM requested bomber 'sensitivity' - Thanks for that Gordy!

This from the BBC is a complete non-story. As we are all aware Megrahi has been released to jubilant scenes in Libya, his homeland. Fortunately the BBC are now telling us that PM Brown requested of the Libyans that they show 'sensitivity' upon Megrahi's return. Well assuming that's true thanks PM well done! Now will you actually tell us what you think about this decision to release Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber? Also will there be an inquiry to establish exactly what happened to Pan Am 103? Who was responsible and which terror supporting regime orchestrated this attack? I ask because almost 21 years later people do still not know the full story. Sadly I fear the truth will die with Megrahi. This is a unsatisfying end to a sad and sordid story. Full text below.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had asked Libya to "act with sensitivity" in its welcome for the returning Lockerbie bomber, it has emerged. He sent a letter to Colonel Gaddafi ahead of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison. Crowds in Tripoli, some waving Saltire flags, greeted the Libyan after he was freed on compassionate grounds.

Mr Brown has been urged by Tory leader David Cameron to make clear his view of the decision to release Megrahi. Downing Street confirmed the prime minister had asked Libya to show restraint on the return of the man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 atrocity. The celebratory welcome was subsequently described as "deeply distressing" by Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

It is curious that while others have commented, Britain's own prime minister has not said
David CameronConservative leader. Mr Brown has now been asked by Mr Cameron to state his opinion of the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds. The Conservative leader has already said he believes Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was wrong to free the Libyan. In a letter to Mr Brown, he said the fact that the Scottish Government made the decision did not preclude the prime minister from making a comment.

He wrote: "It is curious that, while others have commented, Britain's own prime minister has not. "I hope you will now take the opportunity to do so. Above all, I believe the public are entitled to know what you think of the decision to release Megrahi, and whether you consider it was right or wrong."
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said that the decision had been made "for the right reasons". The scenes which greeted the Lockerbie bomber's return have been widely criticised.
US President Barack Obama described the release as a "mistake" and said his administration had urged Libya not to give Megrahi a hero's welcome.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond also said the reception was "inappropriate".
Dumfries Labour MP Russell Brown and Dumfriesshire Conservative MP David Mundell described the scenes as "stomach turning" and "sickening". It has also emerged that a visit to Libya by the Duke of York is being reconsidered following the welcome reserved for Megrahi. The Duke's spokesman said a trip to Libya in early September had been "in its planning stages". Terminal cancer He added: "We will continue to take advice from the Foreign Office as we do with all overseas royal visits."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said she was unable to confirm the visit would be cancelled because an official invitation to the British Government from Libya had not yet been received.
However, it is believed the visit by the Duke, who is understood to have made several trips to Libya in recent years, is unlikely to go ahead. Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, was released from jail on Thursday on compassionate grounds and flew back to Libya.

He was convicted in 2001 of carrying out the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people were killed.
He dropped his appeal against conviction earlier this week. Scottish prosecutors at the Crown Office have now confirmed they have also dropped an appeal against his "unduly lenient" sentence.