French author accused of making capital out of the Lockerbie bombing in spy novel

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Daily Record website.  It reads in part:]

A French writer has been accused of exploiting the Lockerbie bombing in a tacky spy novel.

Gerard de Villiers has angered the families of those killed in the terrorist attack with his book Ghosts of Lockerbie. (...)

According to his novel, the Iranians carried out the bombing in a revenge attack and persuaded Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to take the blame for it.

De Villiers, 83, is regarded as France’s equivalent to James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora died in the Lockerbie bombing at the age of 20, said: “It is an exploitation of the Lockerbie tragedy. The families have had to live with a lot of pain caused by these things.

“I would like to see Lockerbie treated with at least some dignity.

“It was a horrible tragedy and I don’t like it being turned into an escapist novel.

“The book is fiction but the sad thing is that fiction is often taken to be the truth by people, particularly if they don’t know anything about the subject.”

Les Fantômes de Lockerbie is de Villiers’s 197th novel in his SAS series about Austrian prince and CIA agent Malko Linge. (...)

The series has sold about 100 million copies worldwide, though most of his books have not been translated into English.

In the Lockerbie book, de Villiers’s fictional spy is sent by the CIA to find evidence of Iran’s involvement to force them to abandon their nuclear programme.

But Frank Duggan, of US-based Victims Of Pan Am Flight 103, said: “There was, and is, some suspicion that Iran had a role in the Lockerbie bombing but there was never a shred of evidence.

“Gaddafi and the Libyans clearly planned it, put the bomb on the plane and admitted it was because the US had bombed Tripoli in 1986. [RB: I should like to see the evidence on which Mr Duggan bases his assertion that Libya "admitted it was because the US had bombed Tripoli in 1986".]

“The case against a state-sponsored terrorist was decided by a unanimous Scottish court and upheld on appeal.

“I am sure it will be a good book and perhaps a movie but it is fiction.” (...)

According to de Villiers’s novel, the Lockerbie attack was carried out in retaliation for American warship USS Vincennes downing an Iranian passenger flight five months earlier, killing 290 people.

Earlier this year, De Villiers said: “I don’t consider myself a literary man. I’m a storyteller. I write fairytales for adults.”

[Only works of fiction that do not swallow hook, line and sinker Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie (like James Robertson’s forthcoming The Professor of Truth) seem to be characterised as “exploitation of the Lockerbie tragedy” by people like Mrs Cohen. Novels predicated on Libyan guilt -- like Vince Flynn’s Kill Shot -- escape the criticism.  Funny, that.]

Lockerbie bombing: Witnesses evade police in Libya

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of Scotland on Sunday. It reads in part:]

The new investigation into the Lockerbie bombing appears to be stalling after Scottish police officers failed to gain access to key suspects in Libya, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

A team from the Crown Office and the former Dumfries and Galloway force was despatched to the north African country in February following an International Letter of Request (ILOR) sent by Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland to Libyan judicial authorities.

The team – accompanied by FBI officers – are trying to establish whether a new case can be brought against Libyans suspected of being involved in the plot that brought down a US airliner over southern Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people.

According to the Crown Office documents released under FOI legislation, the ILOR “seeks information in relation to the ongoing investigation of others involved in the plot”. But they go on to disclose: “There was no access to any individuals of interest during this visit.”

Instead, the team met officials and ministers in tightly-controlled secure buildings in Tripoli, fuelling suspicion that the new Libyan government does not want investigations to proceed.

Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi – who died in Libya from cancer last year three years after being released from prison in Scotland – is the only person ever convicted of the atrocity but the Crown Office believes he did not act alone and the attack on Pan Am flight 103 was “an act of state sponsored terrorism”.

They have previously sought information on his co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted at the trial of the two men at Camp Zeist in Holland in 2001.

But the FOI response indicates they are more interested in “others,” although the Crown Office will not comment publicly on their identity. They are believed to include Abdullah Senussi, the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, head of the intelligence services, and Megrahi’s immediate boss.

Other potential suspects include Saeed Rashid, who, an FBI report previously claimed, “managed a sustained Libyan effort to conduct terrorist attacks against US interests since the early-1980s”, and Izz Aldin Hinshiri, who was suspected of buying the trigger device for the Lockerbie bomb.John Ashton, author of Megrahi: You are my Jury, and former FBI agent Richard Marquise have both said investigations should also target Gadaffi’s former intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, who fled the country during the Libyan revolution.

Former FBI assistant director Buck Revell, who oversaw that agency’s Lockerbie investigation until 1991, believes the Libyan authorities are trying to protect members of the former regime, and urged sanctions as a way of extracting the truth. “I think it was rather naive of us to think they would be given access,” he told Scotland on Sunday.

“I don’t fault them for trying, but there was nothing to indicate they were going to get to speak to the people they wanted to.

“It was a long shot worth taking, given the magnitude of the tragedy, but people there are still protecting elements of the previous government. They don’t believe it is in their best interests to come clean.”

He urged western governments to take a harder line. Libya already faces sanctions over arms deals and military activities, but Revell urged broader economic restrictions.

“We should hold out support and co-operation until they give us support and cooperation,” he said. (...) [RB: Earlier posts on this blog featuring Buck Revell can be accessed here.]

The former chief constable of the Dumfries and Galloway force, Patrick Shearer, is due to meet the Justice for Megrahi Campaign, which believes Megrahi was innocent, this week to discuss their concerns over the investigation.

The Crown Office says the new investigation is still “live” but a spokesman for Police Scotland confirmed that “in an ideal world” the team would have liked to speak to “individuals of interest”.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced the team’s visit would take place when he was in Tripoli earlier this year. However, Hameda al-Magery, the new Libyan government’s deputy justice minister, was reported as saying: “Britain and America are asking us to reopen this file. But this is something of the past. We want to move forward to build a new future, and not to look back at Gaddafi’s black history. This case was closed and both UK and US governments agreed to this. They had their compensation.”

Gaddafi paid victims’ families more than $2 billion 10 years ago, although his regime insisted it was a political move and continued to deny being behind the bombing.

[As I have said before, if the "new investigation" limits itself to seeking evidence of Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie, it is likely to prove futile. Closed minds are the last thing that a true and meaningful investigation requires.]

Lockerbie campaigner's efforts to find truth made into a movie

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Herald, picking up yesterday's post on this blog.  It reads in part:]

Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire's efforts to achieve justice for his daughter and other victims are to be made into a film.

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora died when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland in 1988, has been working with two US production companies on the film.

Amber Entertainment, whose founder worked on such titles as Dangerous Liaisons, The Golden Compass and Ripley's Game, will develop the film alongside Forecast Pictures, according to US magazine Variety.

Dr Swire was tight-lipped about who would star as himself, having signed a confidentiality agreement. He said: "All I can tell you is that the script for it has been worked on for some time. I've been interviewed by the people who are creating the film script."

Asked which actor would play him, Dr Swire said: "I do know the names of some people who are still on the wish list but I'm not at liberty to divulge that. They start off by mentioning almost every actor any normal person would have heard of.

"Eventually, I suppose out the other end of the mincing machine will come a name for someone who's actually prepared to do it. I don't flatter myself for a minute into thinking that somebody terribly famous will be paid to do it."

Dr Swire is a leading figure in the fight for truth about the terrorist atrocity which killed all 259 passengers and crew, and 11 on the ground.

He admitted elements of his campaign may have been controversial but hoped the wider tale of a father seeking justice would have a powerful impact.

"There's a good lesson to be learnt from the fact that no matter how much evil you apply to other people by murdering their children... you cannot suppress the human urge to look for the truth. We have an absolute right to be told the truth by our countries," he said.

Lockerbie’s Memory Miracles

[Oh No! Not Another Lockerbie Blog has today published under this heading the second in its “Credible Witnesses” series.  It reads as follows:]

One of the key people for the prosecution of Megrahi was a former Libyan ESO agent by the name of Majid Giaka. Perhaps the term “Agent” should be used loosely as it turned out that he infact only worked in the ESO’s garage. Giaka did however work for Libyan Arab Airlines at Malta Luqa.

Giaka was recruited by the CIA 5 months before Lockerbie after he approached them stating he wanted “relocate” on return for sensitive information about Libya. He stated he worked at Luqa airport as a cover for his ESO/JSO activities.

Following the bombing of Pan Am 103 Giaka told the CIA that he did not believe an unaccompanied case with explosives would be able to pass through Luqa airport and with his “extensive” contacts such a plot would not have escaped him.

The CIA persuaded Giaka to come to the US in 1991 and he stated he would fully co-operate with the CIA in return for money. Giaka then emerged at the trial Megrahi and described to the court how he seen the two accused with a brown samsonite suitcase at Luqa airport on the day of the bombing. This is another example of Benjamin Franklin's memory reviving skills as two years previously, CIA cables stated that Giaka could remember nothing from that time.

Giaka was described in court as a “real life Walter Mitty” with the four judges dismissing most of his evidence as “at best grossly over exaggerated at worst simply untrue.” They concluded he was mainly motivated by “financial considerations”. Sound familiar?

Lockerbie movie in development

[The following is an excerpt from an exclusive report headlined Amber, Forecast Setting Up Lockerbie Movie published today on the website of the show business magazine Variety:]

Amber Entertainment and Forecast Pictures have launched development of a [movie] based on Dr. Jim Swire (...), whose eldest child perished in Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.

Forecast’s Jean Charles Levy will collaborate with Amber’s Ileen Maisel and Lawrence Elman. Audrey O’Reilly has been tapped to write the screenplay.

Swire’s daughter Flora Swire was one of the 259 people on board the flight. The story will follow a father’s journey in search of truth to honor the memory of his daughter.

Swire, an English doctor, was active in the UK Families Flight 103 to seek a public inquiry into the crash. Two Libyan suspects were tried in 2000; one of them, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted of 270 counts of murder the following year.

Swire said of the project, “I believe this young and vibrant group has the skills, humanity and resources to create a film which will respect the depths of the many human tragedies involved, but also make us rejoice that love and the human spirit cannot in the end be overcome by evil.”

Amber and Forecast are not disclosing details about the project other than saying the movie is “not intended to make judgments; but to tell of Jim Swire’s integrity in his never ending demand for truth and justice.”

[A press release about the film can be read here on Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph's Lockerbie Truth website.]

Spurious Lockerbie bombing allegations

[What follows is a brief excerpt from an interview with Professor Francis A Boyle published yesterday on the CASMII website:]

q: Do you have any experience of helping other UN member states take legal action against the economic sanctions imposed upon them by the United States and other countries?

a: Well, I advised Colonel Gaddafi to sue the United States and Britain over the spurious Lockerbie bombing allegations at the world court and eventually Colonel Gaddafi was able to work his way out of those sanctions, yes. And at least at the time I was advising him, there was no military attack until 2011 that the United States and NATO decided to stab Colonel Gaddafi in the back. But I’ve done this work with Libya, and also with Bosnia.

[Futher items on this blog about the views on Lockerbie of Professor Boyle can be accessed here.]

Margaret Thatcher and Lockerbie

[On the occasion of the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, here are excerpts from two posts from this blog’s archives:]

1.  23 March 2011

[A letter from Dr Jim Swire in yesterday's edition of The Herald reads as follows:]

In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher colluded with US President Ronald Reagan in facilitating the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi – revenge for an alleged Libyan terrorist bomb in Germany.

Inspection of the Gaddafi family residence of the time, preserved as a ruin ever since, and seen on our screens again these days, makes it obvious that the US bomb which partially destroyed the residence had been intended to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi (“New Gaddafi blitz”, The Herald, March 21).

Instead the blast and shrapnel killed Gaddafi’s adopted daughter Hannah, aged 18 months, asleep in her bedroom. Some 30 Libyan civilians died too that night. Their relatives still grieve as we do.

In 1993, nearly two years after the publication of indictments of two Libyan citizens for their alleged part in causing the Lockerbie disaster, Lady Thatcher wrote, in praise of this action, in The Downing Street Years.

She wrote: “First it [the bombing raid] turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined … the much-vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled. There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years.”

Two years later the Lockerbie tragedy occurred.

In 1991, when the indictments were issued, I first visited Gaddafi to beg him to allow his citizens to appear before a Scottish court. I also asked him to put up a picture of Flora on the wall of Hannah’s bedroom, beside one of Hannah. Beneath we put a message in Arabic and English. It was still there in 2010 when I was last in Tripoli.

It reads: “ The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people.”

Even forbidden as we private citizens still are, to see the secret documents from those days, the sentiments of Flora’s message remain secure. I hope the plaque will not be destroyed in a second attempt at assassination. Libyans should decide their own future, as we ours.

2.  17 August 2011

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is not guilty, veteran politician Tam Dalyell has claimed.

Speaking three days before the second anniversary of Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, Mr Dalyell also repeated his claim that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher personally dismissed calls for a public inquiry into the bombing. (...)

However, calls persist for a public inquiry, with Holyrood's Justice Committee preparing to consider a petition on the matter by the Justice For Megrahi group, led my Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died in the bombing.

However, Mr Dalyell claimed that Mrs Thatcher personally rejected earlier calls for an inquiry.

He said: "I asked her why, across 800 pages of her autobiography, that she didn't mention Lockerbie once.

"And she said: 'I didn't know about it...I don't know exactly what happened, and I don't write about things that I don't know about'."

He added: "It was clear by that time that she had been told by the Americans that they did not want a public inquiry.

"And you will remember that Jim Swire and John Mosey, the relatives, had gone to Cecil Parkinson, the Transport Secretary, who agreed that there should be a public inquiry.

"However, he came back rather sheepishly and said: 'I'm afraid my colleagues don't agree'.

"But there was only one colleague, and she didn't agree." 

[A further interesting insight about Margaret Thatcher and Lockerbie from Tam Dalyell can be read here.]

Rewards for Justice and the Gauci brothers

[An Agence France Presse news agency report on the ABS-CBN News website on 4 April contains the following sentences:]

Since its launch in 1984, the Rewards for Justice program run by the Diplomatic Security bureau of the State Department has paid out $125 million in rewards to 80 people for information leading to the capture of terrorists. (...)

The program is also still seeking information on cases in which the trail appears to have gone cold, including the 1983 attack on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

[The report does not mention the payments made to the Gauci brothers in the Lockerbie case, nor does the Rewards for Justice website.  This blog’s posts on the issue can be accessed here.]

Addendum

[I am grateful to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer for supplying the link to a page about the Lockerbie case on the Rewards for Justice website.  It reads as follows:]

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a US registered Boeing 747 en route from London, Heathrow Airport, to JFK Airport in New York, was destroyed when an improvised explosive device, concealed in an item of luggage, detonated in the cargo hold of the aircraft. This explosion resulted in the deaths of all 259 passengers and crew aboard, including 189 Americans, as well as 11 residents of the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

On November 13, 1991, agents of the Libyan government, Abdel Basset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalfia Fhimah, "together with others unknown to the Grand Jury", were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for Conspiracy to Destroy a Civil Aircraft of the United States, Kill Nationals of the United States, and on related substantive explosives charges. The following day, the Lord Advocate announced that al-Megrahi and Fhimah had been charged in Scotland with conspiracy and murder offenses.

On January 31, 2001, al-Megrahi was found guilty of the murder of all 270 victims on Pan Am Flight 103, in the air and on the ground in Lockerbie, by a panel of three High Court judges. He received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and was required to serve 27 years before becoming eligible to apply for parole. His co-accused, Fhimah was found not guilty and was flown to Tripoli, Libya. On March 14, 2002, al-Megrahi's conviction was affirmed by a panel of five different Scottish High Court judges, and he was moved to Scotland to begin service of his sentence.

Following an application to the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC), in June 2007, al-Megrahi was permitted to file a new appeal. While that appeal was pending, in September, 2008 al-Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. On August 20, 2009, based upon the advice of the Scottish Prison Medical Service that he had less than three months to live, and after al-Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the Court could rule, al-Megrahi's application for compassionate release was granted by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Including credit for time served in pre-trial detention, al-Megrahi had served slightly more than 10 years of his life sentence when he was released. As of this date, both al-Megrahi and Fhimah are believed to still be in Tripoli.

Believing that al-Megrahi and Fhimah did not act alone in causing a bomb to be loaded onto Pan Am Flight 103, the US Department of State has authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and the murders of the 270 victims.

[Note that absolutely no mention is made here of the large sums already paid to the Gauci brothers, payments confirmed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission during its investigation of the Megrahi conviction.]

English première of The Lockerbie Bomber play

A play telling the story of the Lockerbie bombing will make its English première in Hertford Theatre Week.

Scottish company Tryst Theatre will perform The Lockerbie Bomber, which focuses on the 1988 bombing of Pam Am 103 that resulted in the death of 270 people, on Saturday April 27, the final day of the festival at Hertford Theatre. (...)

Each play starts at 7.45pm and awards will be handed out after the final show.

Tickets cost £11 (...)

[The above is taken from the website of the Hertfordshire Mercury. Further blogposts about this play can be read here.]

Dumfries and Galloway Police and the Lockerbie case

[The following is an excerpt from an article published today on the BBC News website headed The biggest cases of Scotland's smallest police force:]

Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary was formed on 16 February 1948 out of another merger - this time of the constabularies of Dumfriesshire, Wigtownshire and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.

That makes it the oldest of the eight forces being amalgamated on 1 April this year.

In its lifetime, it has seen its officers take the lead in numerous major cases - but one towers above them all.

Some 270 people - from 21 different countries - died when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie just before Christmas in 1988.

It resulted in the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken in the UK, which was led by Dumfries and Galloway's Chief Constable of the time, John Boyd.

With the assistance of other forces, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was eventually convicted of the bombing at a special court in the Netherlands.

He died last year after being released from jail on compassionate grounds, but the investigation into the atrocity remains "live".

Officers from Dumfries and Galloway visited Libya earlier this year to continue their inquiries.

[At the time of its amalgamation into Police Scotland, Dumfries and Galloway Police had at least one major item of business outstanding, namely Justice for Megrahi’s formal complaint of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation and prosecution. Almost six months have passed since this complaint with supporting evidence was lodged with the police.  As yet no member of Justice for Megrahi’s committee has been interviewed in connection with the complaint. Maybe Police Scotland will be somewhat more active.]

Libya has no objection to re-open Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a report on the Gulf News website dated 28 March on a visit to the United Arab Emirates by Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.  It reads in part:] 

Libya has no objection to re-open investigation into the 1988 bombing that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, killing 270 people, Libyan Prime Minister said yesterday.

“We have no objection to re-open [investigation into] the Lockerbie case to uncover the truth. And not to pay any [additional] compensation,” Libyan Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan told Gulf News during his meeting with the Libyan community members in Abu Dhabi.

Zeidan stressed that Libya will not pay any additional compensations. “The case was [financially] settled and we paid compensations.”

Britain insisted that the investigation into the case remains open, after a Libyan minister told The Daily Telegraph that the government there regarded the inquiry as over.

Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he was “delighted” that detectives from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary were going to the Libyan capital. The American government has also shown renewed interest in the case. Senior officials in the Libyan government have told The Daily Telegraph that they had been receiving regular visits from US diplomats.

In 2003 the Libyan government paid $2.16 billion (£1.43 billion) in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims, and Ahmad Own, Libya’s then ambassador to the United Nations, submitted a letter to the Security Council formally accepting “responsibility for the actions of its officials” over the Lockerbie bombing.

The settlement came as part of an exchange for the removal of UN sanctions.

The Libyan prime minister made it clear his government is prepared to reopening of the case, but it will not allow Britain and the US to use any new investigation as a way to demand further financial compensation.

The ghosts of Lockerbie

[In February I posted on this blog a couple of items about the views on the Lockerbie disaster of French novelist Gérard de Villiers.  They can be accessed here and here. The following description of his novel SAS 197 Les fantômes de Lockerbie appears on the French Amazon website:]

Un homme connaît la vérité sur l’attentat contre le Boeing 747 de la Panam qui a explosé au-dessus du village de Lockerbie, en Ecosse, le 21 décembre 1988. Les Libyens ont été montrés du doigt mais les Américains soupçonnent un autre commanditaire: l’Iran. Trouver des preuves de leur implication permettrait aux Etats-Unis de les contraindre à abandonner leur programme nucléaire. Malko est envoyé par la CIA pour contacter Choukri El Jallah, qui a fui la Lybie après la mort de Khadafi. Problème, il refuse de parler et Malko manque se faire tuer par sa « garde du corps », une ravissante jeune femme, Jezia. Mais grâce à une petite manip, il parvient quand même à convaincre El Jallah de se livrer aux Américains. Hélas, une voiture piégée l’attend sur le chemin de l’aéroport. Il ne parlera plus à personne...

[A translation can be obtained through Google Translate.]

Megrahi situation was a disappointment for US

[In today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph is an article marking the departure from London of US ambassador Louis Susman.  The following is a short excerpt:]

His term was also marked by particular lows.

Washington and London fell out badly over extradition cases. The previous government’s willingness to send Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, back to Libya still rankles, as does Theresa May’s decision to block the extradition of the hacker Gary McKinnon.

Mr Susman declines to offer a view of the Home Secretary, but it is fair to say that were she to become Tory leader and prime minister, the relationship is likely to be somewhat less special. “I’ve learnt that, close allies as we are, we’re not going to agree on everything, which is probably healthy.

“The Megrahi situation was a disappointment. He was allowed to go back to Libya and was supposed to die in three weeks and took almost two years. The whole extradition issue is one that is very important to us and we hope that the Mackinnon case wasn’t symbolic of the future.”

First reporter on the scene of Lockerbie bombing dies, aged 82

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of the Daily Record.  It reads in part:]

The first reporter on the scene of the Lockerbie bombing has died 25 years after the tragedy.

Former Daily Record district newsman Frank Ryan, who was 82, was remembered yesterday by ex-colleagues as “one of the nicest men in the business”.

Local BBC journalist and author Giancarlo Rinaldi said: “Frank was the first man to a lot of stories. You’d turn up and Frank would already be there having spoken to everybody and have the story.”

Frank’s wife Avril, who wrote the TV column for the Daily Record, said: “Frank was with the Record for 38 years, then decided to go freelance. Lockerbie happened just five months later.

“We’d been in Lockerbie on the night and I remember Frank saying to a local, ‘Anything happening?’

“The lad replied, ‘Nothing ever happens in Lockerbie’. We’d just got home when Frank got a tip-off. He was the first journalist on the scene and his work went all over the world.”

Last year, Frank recalled the night: “I gazed in disbelief at blazing houses, streets littered with debris and chunks of aircraft.

“I watched the townsfolk, many of whom I knew, wandering around. They asked ‘What on earth has happened?’”