Alex Salmond's body 'ready to be brought back to Scotland'

The country’s ministry of foreign affairs said it was now "waiting for information regarding the departure time from the Scottish side".

Mr Salmond died at the age of 69 on Saturday after suffering a heart attack while attending an international conference in the city of Ohrid.

Friends and allies including Sir David Davis, a Conservative MP, have suggested the Royal Air Force should be used to repatriate Mr Salmond’s body with “both dignity and expedition”.

However, The Times reported this could cost around £600,000 and the Scottish Government is said to be considering chartering a private plane.

Chris McEleny, general secretary of the Alba Party, which Mr Salmond launched in 2021, said talks had been ongoing about using the RAF to repatriate the body, 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.”

The Foreign Office said it is “providing consular support” to Mr Salmond’s family and is in contact “with the local authorities and Scottish Government”.

A Scottish Government spokesman said it “has been in regular dialogue with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office since Saturday to ensure full support is in place for the family and around the repatriation of the former first minister”.

Boris Josifovski, an aide to North Macedonia's former president Gjorge Ivanov, who organised the conference Mr Salmond had been attending, told the Associated Press that paperwork was “nearly finished” on Monday and the flight would likely take off from Ohrid in the country’s south west.

It came as a veteran SNP MSP called his party’s treatment of Mr Salmond over recent years “pathetic” and “shameful”.

The former first minister resigned his party membership following allegations of sexual harassment and went on to become leader of the Alba Party in 2021.

He would later be cleared in the High Court of all criminal charges and would accuse figures in the Scottish government and SNP of a plot against him, which was strongly 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 a probe into two harassment complaints against him was “tainted with apparent bias” – accusing senior figures, including Ms Sturgeon and former permanent secretary Leslie Evans, of “misfeasance”.

According to Alba Party acting leader Kenny MacAskill, who is a lifelong friend of Mr Salmond, this action can still be taken forward by the former first minister’s family, a move which he supported. It is not clear whether the family will chose to do this.

Condolences were 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.

Meanwhile, Alba said it had opened an online book of condolence which is open to all. It said the messages will be sent to Mr Salmond’s family at a later date.

A party spokesman said: “We continue to receive messages from across Scotland and the world from people mourning the loss of the former first minister and our party leader. We hope this will allow them to in their own words express their personal condolences.”