Alex Salmond’s allies have vowed to secure him ‘justice’ from beyond the grave by taking on his bitter legal fight against the SNP Government.
Friends and supporters are considering how a legal battle can proceed to ensure that he is ‘vindicated’ and former colleagues are held to account.
Mr Salmond lodged a Court of Session petition last year alleging Scottish Government civil servants had used their lawful power to cause him harm.
He had accused public officials of ‘malfeasance’ during the botched investigation into harassment complaints made against him.
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Former MP Joanna Cherry claimed that Mr Salmond was ‘stabbed in the back’ by former colleagues and friends and insisted that his name would be cleared.
Mr Salmond’s allies have vowed to pick up his legal fight where he left off
Conservative MP David Davis, a close friend of the former First Minister, also vowed he will ‘continue the battle to ensure that justice is done’.
It follows the shock news on Saturday evening that Mr Salmond had died after collapsing at an event in North Macedonia.
In a series of developments yesterday:
Scottish Government officials held talks with the Foreign Office about whether they could help repatriate Mr Salmond’s body back to Scotland.
The Alba Party leader’s wife Moira was being comforted at home in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, after being informed of her husband’s death by telephone shortly before it was announced.
Tributes continued to flood in from across the political spectrum, with former Prime Minister David Cameron describing him as ‘a giant of Scottish and British politics’ and Succession star Brian Cox saying he was ‘one of the greatest political thinkers’.
When he lodged his Court of Session petition last November, Mr Salmond said that no single person had been ‘held accountable’ for the botched Scottish Government probe into complaints against him, which was found to have been unlawful and tainted by apparent bias.
He was seeking substantial sums for reputational damage, after the Scottish Government previously had to pay him more £512,000 in legal fees when it lost the Court of Session judicial review case in 2019.
In March 2020, Mr Salmond was then found not guilty on 12 of the sexual assault charges facing him, while another one was found not proven.
The developments led to a spectacular collapse in his friendship with Nicola Sturgeon, his former close friend and protégé, leaving them no longer on speaking terms in recent years.
Ms Cherry, who was SNP MP for Edinburgh South West from 2015 until she lost in this year’s general election, told the BBC’s The Sunday Show: ‘We have innocent until proven guilty in this country for a reason and I am very dismayed as a lawyer by the lack of respect there has been for the jury verdict in Alex’s criminal charges.
‘It sometimes concerns me that people don’t take seriously enough the gravity of the fact that a government investigation against a former First Minister was found to be tainted by an apparent bias.
‘Now of course Alex has an outstanding civil action and there are outstanding criminal investigations which we can’t say very much about. I think it is a terrible tragedy that Alex has died before he was able to be completely vindicated.
‘But I believe that time will vindicate his name and I think more and more people across the political divide in Scotland are becoming interested in what went on behind the scenes in relation to Alex Salmond.
‘And I think it is the great tragedy of Alex Salmond’s career that so many of his erstwhile comrades and political colleagues and friends either stabbed him in the back or turned their back on him in his hour of need.
‘I found that pretty disgusting at the time and I am very proud that I stood by him and I think it is very important that as we talk about him in the days to come we remember he was acquitted of all the criminal charges against him.’
Mr Davis, who used parliamentary privilege in the House of Commons earlier this year to read out a series of messages which he claimed showed ‘perjury up to criminal conspiracy’, vowed to continue the fight on Mr Salmond’s behalf.
He said he had been due to meet Mr Salmond on Sunday evening ‘to discuss the next round in dealing with both the Scottish Government’s malevolent actions against him and the failure of the rule of law in Scotland’.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Davis said: ‘I will, in his memory, continue the battle to ensure that justice is done.
‘And it will be Alex Salmond’s victory when we achieve the protection of privilege for the Scottish Parliament, when we get proper separation of powers between the Executive and the Scottish judicial process, and when we force a duty of candour for the first time on the Scottish Government.’
In a separate case, the Scottish Information Commissioner has demanded disclosure of the legal advice the Scottish Government received before it decided to appeal its ruling that it should release independent adviser James Hamilton’s full report into whether Ms Sturgeon breached the ministerial code during questioning about her handling of complaints about Mr Salmond.
A close ally of Mr Salmond said: ‘There’s people who are really upset and want to just pay tribute to what Alex did, but others are really upset and want to get justice for people that they feel made the last few years of his life quite difficult.
‘I would imagine there will be quite a few people wanting to support David Davis.’
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