The SNP’s treatment of former first minister of Scotland Alex Salmond has been described as “pathetic” and “shameful” by one of the party’s MSPs.
Mr Salmond – who died after suffering a heart attack on Saturday in North Macedonia – resigned his party membership following allegations of sexual offences and went on to become leader of the Alba Party in 2021.
He would later be cleared in the High Court of all offences and would accuse figures in the Scottish government and SNP of a plot against him, which was denied.
But Fergus Ewing – a long time friend of Mr Salmond and a member of perhaps the most well-known Scottish nationalist family – likened his party’s treatment of the former leader to that of Joseph Stalin.
“Over the past years, the party he transformed and led to victory turned against him and quite literally erased him from their history,” he wrote in the Times.
“They tried to pretend he did not exist. They never talked about him or even uttered his name.
“He made them. They in turn spurned and shunned him.
“In a way it was comparable to Stalin who, after removing ‘enemies of the state’ would wipe all traces of them from official photographs.
“It was, in the true sense of the word, pathetic and it was shameful.”
Mr Salmond’s death drew tributes from those he had formerly been close to, including his deputy and successor Nicola Sturgeon, who acknowledged the “breakdown” of the relationship between the two, but praised him as “an incredibly significant figure in my life”.
But Mr Ewing attacked what he said was a lack of “contrition” in the tributes.
“In the so-called tributes from some in the leadership over the past few sad says, not one single word of contrition has been uttered for this ugliest of defenestrations,” he wrote.
“In the past three years, it was my privilege to work with Alex on all sorts of matters.
“By far the most important of all was to obtain truth and justice for the way he was the subject of what I believe was a concerted campaign by some of the ‘top’ people in the land.”
He went on to describe a “malevolent and wicked campaign” which, if it had succeeded, he said could have ended with Mr Salmond having “died in a prison cell”.
Mr Ewing concluded that, until “the truth of this scandal is exposed, Scotland as a country is diminished”.
The former first minister had launched a second legal action against the Scottish Government – after a judge ruled the probe into two harassment complaints against him was “tainted with apparent bias” and awarded him more than £500,000 in 2019 – accusing senior figures, including Ms Sturgeon and former permanent secretary Leslie Evans of “misfeasance”.
According to Alba Party acting leader – and a lifelong friend of Mr Salmond – Kenny MacAskill, the action can still be taken forward by the former first minister’s family, a move which he supported.
While Mr Ewing wrote that he will “continue to devote myself to securing that truth and justice”.
Giving evidence to a Scottish Parliament committee holding an inquiry into the botched harassment complaint investigation, Mr Salmond accused those at the highest echelons of the Scottish Government of a plot against him, something then first minister Ms Sturgeon called “absurd”.
Meanwhile, work to repatriate Mr Salmond’s body continues, with a top aide to the organiser of the conference the former SNP leader was attending when he died saying a “special flight” will return him to Scotland.
Boris Josifovski, who works for former North Macedonian president Gjorge Ivanov, told the Associated Press that paperwork was “nearly finished” on Monday and the flight would likely take off from the city of Ohrid in the country’s south west.
And Chris McEleny, the general secretary of the Alba Party, said talks had been ongoing about using the RAF to bring Mr Salmond’s body back to Scotland, something usually only reserved for the royal family.
“Conventions are conventions, until they’re not conventions,” he said on Talk TV on Tuesday.
“He was the former first minister of Scotland, we’re talking about the office here.”
Using the RAF would be the right thing to do, Mr McEleny said, adding: “There’s clearly an outpouring of love and hurt in Scotland for Alex, his family obviously need to get him home.”
The Salmond family “are not a normal family”, he said, stressing that a speedy resolution would “help them to grieve, to accept Alex’s loss”.
Mr McEleny added: “I just want to get him home as quickly as possible so that we can move on to, instead of talking about the manner in which he died, start talking about the manner in which he lived.”
Condolences were also sent to First Minister John Swinney from the Prince of Monaco, Albert II, who described Mr Salmond as “a leader of deep conviction and unwavering dedication”, according to the Monaco Tribune.
