"Condemned to live with deaths of loved ones": 36 years on from Lockerbie bombing
Jim Swire reflects on the attack, ahead of a new TV drama starring Colin Firth
Last updated 21st Dec 2024
Today marks 36 years since the Lockerbie disaster – when Pan Am flight 103 exploded 40 minutes into its flight from London to New York.
All 259 passengers and crew on board – and 11 people on the ground – were killed.
A new Sky drama "Lockerbie: A Search for Truth", starring Colin Firth, is due to air in the New Year, telling the story of Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died in the 1988 bombing.
Jim said: “I very much hope the series will increase our audience size, because as far as we’re concerned, we’ve discovered so many things that do not fit with the official version.
“I want to know who was responsible for murdering those people.”
Jim Swire has long contested the bombing was carried out by a Syria-based group in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by an American warship earlier in 1988.
He wants the UK Government to release "all" the information it has on the bombing and doubts the involvement of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Libyan Abu Agila Masud who'll stand trial in the US next year.
The retired GP said: “We think we know who is behind it – we think it is the Ayatollah’s of Iran, and that knowledge is confined too much to us and not enough to the public.”
Scotland’s most senior judges previously upheld a secrecy order signed by the former foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to withhold intelligence documents believed to implicate a Palestinian terror group in the Lockerbie attack.
In response the Crown Office, referred to a recent statement by the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC, who said: "The trial court held that this act of state-sponsored terrorism was orchestrated by the Libyan government and that Megrahi was involved with others.
"That verdict has been the subject of intense scrutiny and has been upheld twice in the appeal court."
Victim’s families “condemned to live with deaths of loved ones”
Although today marks the anniversary of the disaster, Jim says he never stops thinking of every single person affected.
“People often ask that every year it comes around but actually, the very day of the disaster is not the thing to remember.
“What we remember of course is the lives that were snuffed out that night, and particularly our daughter Flora’s life.
“And we remember them every day of every year that goes by – for us, it’s something we’re condemned to live with for the rest of our lives.”