A commentary on the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am 103 disaster.
Wednesday 6 May 2015
At the start of the trial
Saturday 17 February 2024
Jim Swire is a force of nature
[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday evening on the website of The Sun:]
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.
Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth will play Jim in the Sky series, Lockerbie, which is being filmed now. (...)
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. (...)
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.” getting on to the Boeing 747 on December 21, 1988, at Heathrow Airport before it exploded shortly after 7pm. (...)
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.
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.
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. (...)
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.” (...)
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 Heathrow’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.”
The Lockerbie crime scene was the largest ever in UK history. (...)
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. (...)
[F]ollowing 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.
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.”
Saturday 30 January 2010
Some reflections following Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq Inquiry
In seeking to defend his decisions over Iraq, Mr Blair emphasised to Chilcot how the atrocity of 9/11 instantaneously changed the 'tolerance of risk' for the government and people of the USA, even venturing to suggest that sooner or later the same approach might be used upon Iran.
9/11 was of course the 11th of September 2001. In England it was a beautiful autumn day with the sun streaming down on the open French-windows of a house in Worcestershire. In the grounds of that house stood a 'satellite van' with its dish aligned on a satellite positioned over Madagascar, designed to transport the local scene to the studios of Sky TV for transmission instantly to a world audience.
Sky TV was there to discuss the significance of a new and startling development following the verdict reached in Zeist, Holland, against the Libyan intelligence agent al-Megrahi. That verdict had claimed that in a bizarre and complex conspiracy, Megrahi, from Malta, had used a sophisticated Swiss timer, well capable of being set to explode over mid Atlantic, to thread his bomb's route through three airports and two changes of aircraft, to litter the peaceful fields of Lockerbie with the debris of 259 human beings and a gigantic aircraft, and to murder 11 of Lockerbie's people, all just 38 minutes after it had left the Heathrow tarmac.
Sky TV were there, more than 12 years later, because they had only just heard that, unknown to the Zeist court, that there had been a break-in at Heathrow in the early morning of the disaster, giving access through the perimeter to the baggage assembly shed where the PanAm baggage container, shown at Zeist to have contained the bomb, was loaded that evening.
They were also there asking the question why this information had lain hidden for more than 12 years till after the verdict was reached at Zeist.
Our families had climbed aboard a flight at Heathrow which our Fatal Accident Inquiry, although also ignorant of the break-in, had found to be under the host state protection of the UK while being loaded from empty there. It was a valid question to ask of our government. Particularly when one realises that the same Zeist court had heard full details of a type of bomb built in Syria, which was available in 1988 and stable indefinitely at ground level, yet designed always to explode approximately 37 minutes after take off.
The Lockerbie plane managed just 38 minutes of flight.
Hollow indeed now rang the trumpeting of Paul Channon, Thatcher's Transport secretary, to the House of Commons on 22 December 1988 that we should be proud that at least Heathrow's security was known to be amongst the best in the world.
Throughout the day of 21st December 1988 Heathrow authorities knew that there had been a break-in, yet they did not know who had broken in, nor what the motive might have been. At a time of known increased terrorist threat they continued the lucrative flow of outgoing flights until the bomb exploded on PanAm 103 that evening.
When criticising an accepted theory, it is useful to produce a simpler and more credible alternative.
So what if the Heathrow break-in was indeed the route for getting a bomb onto the Lockerbie aircraft? For a start the Iran/Syria grouping with their pressing revenge motive and their unique possession of this technology would be centre stage, Malta Frankfurt and Megrahi would be irrelevant.
Such a theory is unexplored: why is that?
Why did the news of the break-in lie hidden for 12 years?
Who was complicit in concealing it?
What was their motive for doing so?
We know that the Metropolitan police (and therefore presumably the Thatcher government) knew of it, why did they keep quiet?.
Why were the Metropolitan police excluded from the [Lockerbie] investigation, turned over by Thatcher to a Scottish force?
Does this throw any light on why Thatcher and every Prime Minister since, including Blair and Brown, has for 21 years refused us the inquiry to which we have an inalienable right?
Did the Crown Office know about the break-in? They have claimed that they didn't.
Did the investigating Scottish police know about it? They haven't said. Of course a Heathrow break-in was a simple but potent threat to their complex Malta hypothesis.
As the sun still shone through those French windows, the Sky TV reporters heard through their phones that a second plane had struck. Now there was no doubt: this was a huge planned terrorist outrage on America's trophy city New York. For a US public which had never had to bear the outrage of enemy bombing of its home territory, as Blair said to Chilcot, the 'tolerance of risk' in America had changed for ever.
Like the morning dew, the Sky reporters and their technology melted away to cover this new atrocity. The coincidence of 9/11's timing had disabled the power of a free media to question the received wisdom.
But the questions remain and shall be professionally addressed.
Unlike Blair, many affected by the Lockerbie atrocity have avoided the idea of retaliation by force against the responsible country, pressing for the use of justice. They see that the atrocity was an act of revenge, and that to seek revenge for it in turn is to abandon the intellectual high ground, and to sink to the philosophy favoured by some terrorists. So long as Blair and all who have shared his office and establishment continue to rely blindly upon a solution to the worst terrorist atrocity ever to occur in their country, which seems fatally flawed, they put at risk more civilised routes through international justice. Their way stands to bring a blight upon all our futures.
In the end history, not Chilcot, will judge them.
Monday 28 December 2015
Pan Am 103 destroyed by "detonation of high explosive"
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Don't forget Lockerbie
One of the first questions asked of me by every journalist and reporter covering the story about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is: why is there such an apparent divide between the US and British relatives? Why do they believe he is guilty, and we remain to be convinced? Some imply that doubts about Megrahi's guilt by some UK representatives put the interests of a mass murderer before those of justice, a folly of the woolly liberal. This is far from the truth and I think the reasons for the differences in view are more complex.
Within days of the bombing, the then transport secretary, Paul Channon, stood in the House of Commons and obscured the truth about the number of credible warnings against US aviation. Our suspicions of a cover-up began and have remained to this day. Within three months, the UK families formed a support group, with the motto "The truth must be known". By then, the families knew that we would have a hard fight ahead to get to that truth.
The bombing of Pan Am 103 is often referred to as an American disaster. Yet it killed people from 21 countries, 47 of them British and Irish. I believe that the fact that it happened on our soil leaves the British relatives feeling a sense of responsibility for all the victims. The bomb was loaded on to the plane at a British airport and it was our government's responsibility first to protect travellers from such an attack, and second to understand how and why it was allowed to happen and ensure that lessons were learned for air travellers around the world. And finally, to seek and bring to justice those responsible for carrying out the attack.
UK families took this responsibility within the context of a country that has experienced terrorism first-hand for many years, and has also seen numerous miscarriages of justice where innocent people were convicted and jailed for terrorist crimes they did not commit. So it is no surprise that many British relatives have a scrupulous desire to ensure this does not happen again. If Pan Am 103 had taken off from JFK airport, we don't know what difference this would have made to the way the UK families have responded.
I am not arguing Megrahi's innocence and I feel that his decision to exercise his right to silence in the original trial did nothing to strengthen his defence. His co-accused was found innocent, a strong outcome in a Scottish court, where there is the option of a "not proven" verdict. I welcomed the decision of the Scottish criminal cases review commission to refer Megrahi's case back to the high court for appeal, an opportunity for us to hear any evidence that might get us nearer to the truth. The abandonment of the appeal is the worst possible outcome, as that evidence will now not be heard. But whatever his guilt or innocence, one thing everyone agrees on, including the court, is that he did not act alone.
I find it astounding that the UK government seems to have washed its hands of the whole affair and passed on responsibility to Scotland. Jack Straw's involvement includes stints as home secretary, foreign secretary and justice secretary, and in each of these posts he has had dealings with UK relatives. It was he who concluded the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiations with Libya, started by Tony Blair. Yet, when we contacted him about the impact this would have on the families, he said it was a Scottish government responsibility.
Why was Megrahi not excluded from the agreement? Now, the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has to decide whether to repatriate Megrahi or to release him on compassionate grounds. It is extraordinary when such a momentous decision is to be made by a man with no background in the case. I understand why US senators are putting pressure on MacAskill not to release Megrahi, but wish they would also put pressure on the UK government to hold an independent inquiry that might establish some of the answers to the bigger questions: who ordered the bombing? What was the motivation for it? Why was it not prevented? These answers must be sought whatever Megrahi's guilt or innocence.
The primary reason given by Straw and others in government through the years is that such an inquiry might prejudice the criminal process. Now, that argument has no validity. Westminster must not wash its hands of Lockerbie. One step the UK government could take is to follow the example of the Hillsborough case, by releasing all official papers (now, more than 20 years after the bombing).
We will resolutely continue our search for the truth. If the UK government fails to hold an inquiry, we will lobby the Scottish government do so and ensure that all responsible British government ministers and officials are called to account.
[The above is the text of an opinion piece by Pamela Dix, a relative of one of the British victims of the Lockerbie disaster, on The Guardian's Comment is free website.]