My daughter was murdered by Lockerbie bombers – thank god new Colin Firth drama is trying to get to the truth
RETIRED GP Jim Swire is a force of nature – a man with balls of steel.
His search for justice after his daughter was murdered in the Lockerbie bombing has been so intense that at times he has put his own life in danger.
The 87-year-old campaigner faced down the late “mad dog” Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s guards armed with AK-47s, sneaked a fake bomb on a plane to expose security flaws and fears he could be a target for Iranian assassins.
But 35 years after 270 people were murdered in the attack over Scotland, on the Pan Am passenger jet flying from London to New York, thoughts of his 23-year-old daughter Flora break his indomitable spirit.
When Jim tries to remember the last words he said to medical student Flora before she left to catch the plane, tears flood his eyes and we pause the interview.
We are speaking in the conservatory of his Cotswolds home because he hopes an upcoming TV drama about the terror bombing will create the same public outcry seen when ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones highlighted the organisation’s IT scandal.
Jim will be played by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth in the Sky series, Lockerbie, which is being filmed now.
The BBC is making a rival drama about Lockerbie, with streaming giant Netflix.
The King’s Speech star Colin’s talents will be tested if he is to display Jim’s range of emotions.
Apart from his grief — and bravery — there is also anger at the bungling officials who failed to stop the fateful bomb getting on to the Boeing 747 on December 21, 1988, at Heathrow Airport before it exploded shortly after 7pm.
Cannot hide his rage
The Sky drama is based on 2021 book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search For Justice, which Jim co-wrote, and he is thrilled Colin Firth is championing the cause.
He tells The Sun: “I am satisfied Colin will do his utmost to portray someone who has been searching diligently for the truth in the name of the murder of his daughter and all those other people.”
Colin spent a day at Jim’s home in order to convince him he was the man for the role.
Jim, a BBC soundman turned GP, believes documents are still being withheld from relatives which could reveal either a cock-up in the investigation or a cover-up.
She was excited to go see her boyfriend. I remember big hugs, actual words I can’t remember
The worst terror atrocity ever to be visited upon the UK is still shrouded in mystery and controversy.
Only one person has been convicted of carrying out the attack — Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. His country-man Abu Agila Mohammad Masud is awaiting trial.
On December 21, 1988, Nottingham University student Flora was heading to meet her boyfriend in the US, where she planned to celebrate her birthday the next day.
Tearfully, Jim, who also has son William and daughter Catherine, recalls the last time he saw eldest child Flora: “She was excited to go see her boyfriend. I remember big hugs, actual words I can’t remember.”
Unusually for before Christmas, it had been easy for Flora to get a ticket for the flight and Jim believes this was because American and British diplomatic staff had been told it could be blown up.
Bomb threat not heeded
A call had been made to the US embassy in Finnish capital Helsinki warning that a bomb would be loaded on a Pan Am flight in Frankfurt, Germany, bound for Heathrow then New York.
That information was not passed on to regular travellers.
The threat should have been taken seriously because in October that year terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command were found with bombs in Neuss, Germany, designed to trigger once a plane reached a certain height.
The PFLP-GC’s improvised devices were hidden in a Toshiba cassette player exactly like the one used to explode on Pan Am 103, which was hidden in a suitcase loaded at Frankfurt airport.
It was in the baggage compartment, almost beneath the feet of my daughter and all of those innocent passenger
A description of the potential bomb was passed to staff at Heathrow but photos were not dispatched until two days before the Lockerbie explosion.
Incredibly, British security teams were not ordered to remove suspect luggage. They were simply told: “Any item about which a searcher is unable to satisfy himself/herself must, if it is to be carried in the aircraft, be consigned to the aircraft hold.”
Understandably, Jim cannot hide his rage over this fatal delay. He says of the bomb: “It was in the baggage compartment, almost beneath the feet of my daughter and all of those innocent passengers.
“It exploded almost 48 hours from the warning having been passed on by the Department of Transport. Have we had an apology? No we have not.
“Whatever you believe about Libya or all the rest of it, that’s where the explosion occurred, that was the warning they had and that was the way they handled it.
“If that doesn’t make a relative of anyone murdered in that atrocity angry, it bloody well should.”
Jim reveals he has been told the reason for the delay in passing on vital intelligence was penny-pinching.
He says: “I spoke to the guy at the Department of Transport who had examined the warning and asked him why it took so long.
“He said, ‘We had to find a government department which would fund the colouring of the colour photographs from this warning before we were prepared to send it out’. It makes me angry to this day.”
The late Paul Channon, Transport Secretary at the time, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, denied there had been a security failure but lost his job.
In the wake of Lockerbie, airlines claimed far more stringent inspections of luggage were put in place.
Keen to put that promise to the test, Jim, who had explosives training during a stint of military service, built a replica of the Lockerbie bomb with the Semtex explosive replaced by marzipan.
He managed to get it past Heath-row’s security even though a member of security found the Toshiba tape recorder containing the fake device.
Jim recalls: “The lady who opened up the suitcase said, ‘Sir have you taken out the batteries?’ and I said, ‘Yes’ and she put it back.
“That poor lady had not been trained in what might and might not be dangerous.”
Plane debris covered 845 square miles
The Lockerbie crime scene was the largest ever in UK history.
Fragments of the plane, which exploded at 31,000ft over the town in Dunfries and Galloway, were recovered over an area of 845 square miles.
All 243 passengers and 16 crew on board were killed as well as 11 people on the ground from impact injuries.
Initially, the finger of suspicion pointed toward Iran, because it had close links to the PFLP-GC and its leaders had sworn revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet in July 1988 by a US warship.
Then the FBI investigation, carried out in unison with Dumfries and Galloway Police, pivoted instead toward Libya.
Detectives concluded that Libyan Arab Airlines security chief Al-Megrahi and his colleague Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were responsible for the atrocity.
I can’t believe how foolish it was, it still makes me nervous to think about it. I pinned it on him and as I did it I could hear this click, click, click as the guards around him took the safety catches off AK-47s
Jim
Libya’s then leader Gaddafi, who had funded other attacks on Western targets, would not hand over the men for a trial to be presided over by Scottish judges in a neutral country.
So, taking matters into his own hands, Jim went to Libya to try to persuade the North African dictator to change his mind.
Near the end of the meeting, surrounded by a dozen female guards, he decided to pin a badge on to Gaddafi that read: “Lockerbie: The Truth Must Be Known”.
Jim recalls: “I can’t believe how foolish it was, it still makes me nervous to think about it. I pinned it on him and as I did it I could hear this click, click, click as the guards around him took the safety catches off AK-47s.”
Pointing the finger at Tehran
Luckily, Jim got out alive and, following pressure from sanctions, the two Libyan suspects were tried in Holland in 2000. As the trial went on Jim started to doubt they had been responsible for Flora’s murder. When Al-Megrahi was found guilty — although Fhimah was cleared and let go — he collapsed from shock.
Jim says: “My son sitting next to me in the courtroom thought that I had died.”
He now believes the late PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril was the true mastermind of the horror that claimed his daughter’s life.
It has often occurred to me that I might get bombed
Jim
Jibril died of heart failure in July 2021 in Syrian capital Damascus, and Jim says: “I can’t conceal from you I am delighted he is dead.”
He suspects that Jibril’s ultimate paymasters were Iran’s security services.
Pointing the finger at Tehran’s murderous ayatollahs shows how fearless Jim is. He says: “It has often occurred to me that I might get bombed. The more the truth comes out the more possible it is that I might get killed by Iran for wanting revenge.
“It seems to me the direct line came from Iran.”
But Scottish judges have twice upheld the murder convictions of Al-Megrahi, who died from cancer in 2012.
Next year US prosecutors will bring Masud to trial, accusing him of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.
Whatever any court decides, nothing will take away the pain from Jim and his wife Jane.
As Jim puts it: “When someone close to you in your family gets murdered, you get handed a life sentence.
“Jane and I will go to our graves still mourning the loss of Flora.”