New TV series on Lockerbie bombing

[What follows is the text of a report published today on the website of the Dumfries and Galloway Standard:]

A new five-part TV mini series based on bereaved father Dr Jim Swire’s search for justice over the Lockerbie bombing is being created.

To be called “Lockerbie,” it is being written by Academy Award nominees Jim Sheridan (In The Name of The Father, My Left Foot) and Kirsten Sheridan (In America, Dollhouse) with information from the book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice which was written by Dr Swire and Peter Biddulph, along with multiple other sources.

Dr Swire and his wife Jane lost their beloved daughter, Flora, in the air disaster in 1988 and have been outspoken activists in the search for “truth and justice” over the bombing ever since.

Dr Swire is also no stranger to Lockerbie which he has visited on a number of occasions and was at the 30th anniversary memorial service in Dryfesdale Cemetery.

His campaign has taken him to the sand dunes of Libya to meet face-to-face with Colonel Gaddafi, to 10 Downing Street to meet with successive Prime Ministers and to the corridors of power in the US where he worked with the American victims’ groups to mount pressure on Washington for tighter airport security, well before 9/11.

The series is expected to air in 2023 on Sky in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Italy. It will stream on Peacock in the US. NBC Universal Global Distribution will be handling international sales.

It is expected to explore events from 1988 to the present day, “while providing an intimate account of a man, a husband, and a father who pushes his marriage, his health and his sanity to the edge”.

Writers Jim and Kirsten said: “The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was one of the world’s deadliest terror attacks that continues to have widespread implications for the meaning of justice in the US, Scotland and Libya.

“Over 30 years on, this series takes an intimate and very personal look at the aftermath of the disaster and we are grateful to all of those, particularly Jim and Jane, who have entrusted us to tell their story and the story of their loved ones, on screen.”

Dad of Lockerbie victim 'will never stop trying to get the truth'

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

Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire has said he’s behind a new TV drama about the atrocity because he will never stop trying to get to the truth.

His daughter Flora, 23, was a passenger on Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up 31,000ft above Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

Thirty-three years on from Britain’s worst terror attack, Jim and his wife Jane, 82, are helping with a new Sky mini-series based on his memoir and the couple’s tireless search for justice.

Jim, 85, said: “When I first decided I would risk going to see Colonel Gaddafi, who I and everyone else believed was virtually the devil-incarnate and the originator of the atrocity at Lockerbie, I remember wondering, ‘What would Flora think of me if I should die now?’

“I’m sure she would have thought, ‘At least my father is trying to find out the truth about why I was murdered.’

“This TV series is another part of that journey and I’m sure Flora would approve of it too.”

Just after the tragedy, some family members of those who died launched a campaign for truth and justice.

Jim became the public face of the group and accused the UK and US governments of a cover-up.

His investigations and ongoing battle to uncover what happened saw him not only meet Gaddafi several times but meet successive prime ministers and even befriend Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who he believes was wrongly convicted of the bombing.

Last year he published a memoir with writer Peter Biddulph, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search For Justice.

The story has inspired a five-part TV series which will be written by Academy Award nominee Jim Sheridan, who directed My Left Foot, and his daughter Kirsten Sheridan.

The drama will focus on Jim – and how his fight for justice pushed his marriage, health and sanity to the edge. (...)

Jim, who has a family home on Skye, said: “If we can draw attention to the failures that happened in this case, and if we can do anything to improve on those failures, then that’s always worth striving for, even if it brings a little discomfort to those who lost loved ones in this catastrophe.”

Screenwriters Jim and Kirsten said: “Over 30 years on, this series takes an intimate and very personal look at the aftermath of the disaster, and we are grateful to all of those, particularly Jim and Jane, who have entrusted us to tell their story, and the story of their loved ones, on screen.”

RIP Archbishop Desmond Tutu

[I am saddened to learn of the death today at the age of 90 of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who was a convinced and long-time supporter of the Justice for Megrahi campaign. What follows is an article posted today on Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph's Lockerbie Truth website:]

Today's sad news about the death of former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu holds a feature common to much of the media in the UK and USA. 

The selective amnesia of certain media editors is clear: Effusively praise those issues in which Tutu agrees with your agenda, and ignore those in which he opposes.

And so it is, once again, with the campaign for an inquiry into the factors surrounding the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and subsequent trial.

On the 15th March 2015 we reported that a petition had been submitted to the Scottish Parliament by the Justice for Megrahi group of bereaved relatives. That petition was rapidly and publicly supported by prominent personalities around the world. The petition, even after six years, still runs current on the Scottish Parliament's agenda.

Among those signing in support of the petition was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He proved to be a strong supporter of the imprisoned Baset al-Megrahi and a South African colleague Nelson Mandela.  Mandela's support for al-Megrahi, too, remains ignored by the main British and US media. 

On 15th March 2015 we published the following post: [Names in alphabetical order].

Campaign for the acquittal of Baset Al-Megrahi and an official inquiry into Lockerbie

A petition requesting that the Scottish authorities undertake a comprehensive inquiry into Lockerbie is supported and signed by the following world renowned personalities. All support the campaign for acquittal of Baset Al-Megrahi, who was in 2000 convicted for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am 103.

Kate Adie was chief news correspondent for the BBC, covering several war zones 

on risky assignments. Currently hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme 

From Our Own Correspondent.

Professor Noam Chomsky has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, 

and has authored over 100 books. In a 2005 poll was voted 

the "world's top public intellectual".

Tam Dalyell, former Member of British Parliament and Father of the House. 

An eminent speaker who throughout his career refused to be prevented 

from speaking the truth to powerful administrations.

 

Christine Grahame MSP, determined advocate of the Lockerbie campaign.

Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye magazine.

Father Pat Keegans, Lockerbie Catholic parish priest at the time of the tragedy. 

 Mr Andrew Killgore, former US Ambassador to Qatar. Founder of Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.

John Pilger, former war correspondent, now a campaigning journalist and film maker. 

Dr Jim Swire.

Sir Teddy Taylor, British Conservative Party politician, MP from 1964 to 1979. 

Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of South Africa. 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr Terry Waite. Former envoy for the church of England, held captive from 1987 to 1991

THE FULL LIST OF SIGNATORIES

Ms Kate Adie (Former Chief News Correspondent for BBC News).

Mr John Ashton (Author of ‘Megrahi: You are my Jury’ and co-author of ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).

Mr David Benson (Actor/author of the play ‘Lockerbie: Unfinished Business’).

Mrs Jean Berkley (Mother of Alistair Berkley: victim of Pan Am 103).

Mr Peter Biddulph (Lockerbie tragedy researcher).

Mr Benedict Birnberg (Retired senior partner of Birnberg Peirce & Partners).

Professor Robert Black QC (‘Architect’ of the Kamp van Zeist Trial).

Mr Paul Bull (Close friend of Bill Cadman: killed on Pan Am 103).

Professor Noam Chomsky (Human rights, social and political commentator).

Mr Tam Dalyell (UK MP: 1962-2005. Father of the House: 2001-2005).

Mr Ian Ferguson (Co-author of ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).

Dr David Fieldhouse (Police surgeon present at the Pan Am 103 crash site).

Mr Robert Forrester (Secretary of Justice for Megrahi).

Ms Christine Grahame MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).

Mr Ian Hamilton QC (Advocate, author and former university rector).

Mr Ian Hislop (Editor of ‘Private Eye’).

Fr Pat Keegans (Lockerbie parish priest on 21^st December 1988).

Ms A L Kennedy (Author).

Dr Morag Kerr (Secretary Depute of Justice for Megrahi).

Mr Andrew Killgore (Former US Ambassador to Qatar).

Mr Moses Kungu (Lockerbie councillor on the 21^st of December 1988).

Mr Adam Larson (Editor and proprietor of ‘The Lockerbie Divide’).

Mr Aonghas MacNeacail (Poet and journalist).

Mr Eddie McDaid (Lockerbie commentator).

Mr Rik McHarg (Communications hub coordinator: Lockerbie crash sites).

Mr Iain McKie (Retired Superintendent of Police).

Mr Marcello Mega (Journalist covering the Lockerbie incident).

Ms Heather Mills (Reporter for ‘Private Eye’).

Rev’d John F Mosey (Father of Helga Mosey: victim of Pan Am 103).

Mr Len Murray (Retired solicitor).

Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church).

Mr Denis Phipps (Aviation security expert).

Mr John Pilger (Campaigning human rights journalist).

Mr Steven Raeburn (Editor of ‘The Firm’).

Dr Tessa Ransford OBE  (Poetry Practitioner and Adviser).

Mr James Robertson (Author).

Mr Kenneth Roy (Editor of ‘The Scottish Review’).

Dr David Stevenson (Retired medical specialist and Lockerbie commentator).

Dr Jim Swire (Father of Flora Swire: victim of Pan Am 103).

Sir Teddy Taylor (UK MP: 1964-2005. Former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland).

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winner).

Mr Terry Waite CBE (Former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury and hostage negotiator).

Hard to have confidence in the integrity of our law

[What follows is a review of Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph's The Lockerbie Bombing which Press Reader attributes to The Scotsman of 11 December 2021. A version of this review (by Allan Massie) first appeared in The Scotsman on 13 May 2021.] 

It is now more than 32 years since a bomb placed in the cargo hold of a Pan-am flight exploded over Lockerbie 38 minutes out of Heathrow, and 270 people were killed. One of them was Dr Jim Swire’s 23-year-old daughter Flora. Ever since, he has devoted his life to trying to establish who was responsible for the crime. He has, by his account, written here with the collaboration of [Peter] Biddulph, been thwarted at every turn. Consequently, he has developed a deep distrust of the British and American governments and their secret services, and, sadly, a like distrust of the working of the Scottish justice system, both the courts and the police.

The investigation was a tortuous business, hampered, and indeed obstructed, by the tangled web and conflicting interests of the secret services. It was almost by chance that the criminal investigation became the responsibility of the Scottish Police and the Crown Office. If the bomb had exploded ten or 20 minutes later there would have been no dead in Lockerbie and no crime scene in Scotland.

Obviously it was an act of terror. But who were the terrorists? From the start the assumption was that it was not the act of a lone terrorist group like the Red Brigade in Italy or the Badaar-meinhoff gang in West Germany, but had been planned or at least authorised by a hostile state – a state hostile to the USA. The two favoured candidates were Iran and Libya, both of which had recent reason to plan the atrocity.

Meanwhile, the British Government refused requests to hold a Public Inquiry. Dr Swire was, and still is, naturally indignant. Yet, though there were other murky reasons for this refusal, the stated one was good. Can you properly hold such an enquiry, with witnesses on oath, without compromising an ongoing criminal investigation and any subsequent trial?

The investigation eventually focussed on Libya, and then on identified suspects. Where could a trial be held? Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh University proposed staging it a third country, but with Scottish judges and according to Scots Law. It seemed improbable that Libya would find this acceptable. With great courage, Dr Swire went to Libya himself, with a photograph of his murdered daughter, to make a personal appeal to the dictator, Colonel Gaddafi. Politics, and a desire to have economic sanctions lifted, persuaded Gaddafi to give way. Two suspects were therefore delivered to the Netherlands and the trial was underway.

As we all know, one suspect, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, the other not. Members off the bereaved American families expressed satisfaction, but, even as Dr Swire sat through the trial, his confidence in both the evidence offered and the verdict withered. This book tells us why. It tells, too, how he supported al-Megrahi’s appeals and requests for a re-trial, how he befriended him and called for his repatriation when he was diagnosed with cancer, and visited him in Libya before his death.

Though one distinguished Scots lawyer who observed the trial told me that on the evidence presented the only possible verdict had been delivered, an opinion which the Scottish courts have continued to uphold, it subsequently seemed clear that there were weaknesses in the Crown case and that the evidence of its chief witness was tainted and therefore cannot be thought reliable.

It is hard to read this book without concluding that Dr Swire is right, and that for reasons which are both understandable and shameful, successive British governments repeatedly obstructed the investigation and that they did so at the instigation of our American allies. That said, one has in any trial or account of an investigation to remember that things tend to be convincing when you are hearing only one side of the argument, one version of the story. This book recounts Dr Swire’s long and painful search for the truth about Lockerbie, and his version is persuasive.

It is disturbing too because, if Dr Swire has it right, the Scottish judges who have now three times rejected appeals against the original verdict, have made it hard to have confidence in the integrity of our law. Lockerbie was a disaster; what caused it remains a mystery. 

Blair urged Mandela not to raise ‘sensitive subject’ of Lockerbie at 1997 summit

[This is the headline over a Press Association news agency report as published today on the website of the Central Fife Times. The following are excerpts:]

Tony Blair failed in his attempts to stop Nelson Mandela raising the Lockerbie bombing at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Scotland, despite being warned by aides the South African leader’s intervention over the terror attack would be “pretty disastrous”, new files show.

Downing Street officials warned the then-prime minister ahead of the 1997 summit in Edinburgh that Mr Mandela was visiting Libya, which later admitted responsibility for the airliner disaster, before heading to CHOGM, and urged Mr Blair to speak to him.

But Mr Blair’s efforts – including a personal letter to Mr Mandela a week before the CHOGM, urging him to “avoid a discussion” about Lockerbie – failed, and the enduring controversy over a failure to bring any perpetrators to justice ended up being one of the key themes of the leaders’ summit.

A tranche of previously classified files released by the National Archives at Kew shows a handwritten note from Downing Street aides urging Mr Blair “to speak to” his South African counterpart.

Mr Blair duly wrote to Mr Mandela, explaining the complexities of bringing suspects to justice, having resisted calls to hold a trial in a different country.

Mr Blair wrote: “Lockerbie is of course a particularly sensitive subject in Scotland because of the deaths on the ground of 11 inhabitants of the small town of Lockerbie, in addition to the 259 people on board the aircraft.

“So I hope we can avoid a discussion of the issue at CHOGM itself – we have a lot of other things to talk about.

“But I would welcome a further private discussion when we meet next week.”

The letter ended with the handwritten sign-off: “Very best wishes. Yours ever, Tony.”

Mr Blair’s hopes were in vain when Mr Mandela was asked about the subject, claiming justice would not be seen to be done if any trial was held in Scotland itself.

He said: “I have never thought that in dealing with this question it is correct for any particular country to be the complainant, the prosecutor and the judge.

“Justice, it has been said especially in this country, should not only be done but should be seen to be done.

“I have grave concern about a demand where one country will be all these things at the same time. Justice cannot be seen to be done in that situation.”

The move, however, provided an unlikely fillip for Mr Blair – as his subsequent invitation to meeting grieving families at Downing Street was seen as an intention to listen after years of refusal.

[RB: The events surrounding CHOGM and President Mandela's attitude towards a Lockerbie trial are described in The Lockerbie Bombing by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, pages 97 to 101. Further information can be found on this blog here and here.] 

Verdict has inflicted catastrophic damage on Scotland’s criminal justice system

[What follows is excerpted from a long article headlined Lockerbie bombing: Murder victim’s father blames Iran for atrocity and accuses the West of ‘sinister’ cover up published today on the website of the Dundee newspaper The Courier:]

More than 32 years have passed since Jim and Jane’s hearts were torn apart by the terrible events that took place in the skies above Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

A terrorist bomb, loaded into the hold of their beloved daughter’s New York-bound aircraft, exploded 38 minutes after take off from Heathrow Airport, murdering 270 people.

At first, Jim accepted American claims that Libya was responsible.

But during the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man eventually convicted of the atrocity, he began to have doubts. (...)

Over three decades, Jim’s search for the “truth” on behalf of Flora and all those who died has taken him from the corridors of power in London and Washington to the United Nations and Egypt, as well as to the inner sanctum of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Now having released his new book, co-written with Peter Biddulph, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice, Jim explains why he remains disillusioned with the British and American establishment and why he firmly believes it was Iran – not Libya – that was responsible for the atrocity.

He also believes the 2001 Lockerbie trial verdict has inflicted “catastrophic” damage on Scotland’s criminal justice system.

“What matters most about Lockerbie is that 270 people died in a clear cut revenge attack launched at the behest of Iran, and our government both failed to take any notice of the warnings and failed to allow any inquiry into why the attack hadn’t been prevented,” says Jim, now 85, in an interview from his home in the North Cotswolds.

“It’s my view having studied the evidence very carefully over 32 years that the device never came from Malta, never came through Frankfurt airport but was delivered overland to Heathrow and put aboard there, despite the government having been warned about it.

“There’s plenty supporting evidence to show that, which leaves the question of how did it come about that the West mounted the trial that resulted in the conviction of one of one of those two Libyans when clearly that’s not how it was carried out at all?

“I think that’s a really sinister background.

“But the other thing that is monstrous, apart from the murders themselves, is the fact that for whatever reason the West, which really means America and Britain, decided that it was going to create an entirely false story to conceal the fact that they had other ambitions of the outcome from Lockerbie to serve some kind of purpose other than the truth.” (...)

He talks about his view – backed by Scots lawyers he’s spoken to – that the evidence at the Camp Zeist Scottish Court trial was “not coherent”.

While he thinks police in Scotland “did their best”, he believes a fundamental error was made when clothing wrapped around the bomb traceable to Malta was presented as evidence the bomb had come from Malta.

Jim believes that for geopolitical reasons, instead of looking for justice, politicians “wanted to divert blame away from Iran” and they “needed a scapegoat” which they found in Gaddafi’s Libya. Gaddafi admitted responsibility but maintained he did not order the attack.

Jim believes the conviction of al-Megrahi was “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history of Scottish law” and believes future historians will piece together “what really happened” when confidential documents are made public. (...)

Flora, a brilliant medical researcher just a day short of her 24th birthday, was on her way to see her boyfriend in the USA for Christmas when she was murdered.

Describing bereavement as a “life sentence”, Jim admits he and his wife quietly reflect on the children their daughter might have had and the career she might have led.

But as a member of that unwanted club of families who have been affected by terrorist atrocities, he also reveals one of the worst things that happened to him during the last 32 years was when he received an email from a relative of one of the American victims whose daughter had been killed on the flight – sent at a time when it was known al-Megrahi had incurable prostate cancer.

“What she said to me was ‘Dr Swire, you are a doctor over there. Will you speak to the doctors over there and tell them that we don’t want painkillers to be provided to Megrahi. We want that man to die in the utmost agony’.

“What that told me was that poor lady: the hatred she had for the man she at that time very reasonably believed had murdered her child.

“That was another victory for the terrorists – her personality had been destroyed by the hatred that had been generated by the terrorist atrocity.

“One of the things that all of this nonsense about Malta and Libyans and all the rest of it has done is deny us so far the ability to even forgive those who really did murder our children who in this case was essentially the Ayatollahs of Iran and their minions.

“To be denied that and to protect those people from the wrath of international justice is one of the most dreadful things to have fallen out of this, apart from the dreadful murders themselves.”

"Hard to have confidence in the integrity of our law"

[What follows is excerpted from a review by novelist and journalist Allan Massie in today's edition of The Scotsman of Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph's book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search For Justice:]

It is now more than 32 years since a bomb placed in the cargo hold of a Pan-Am flight exploded over Lockerbie 38 minutes out of Heathrow, and 270 people were killed. One of them was Dr Jim Swire’s 23-year-old daughter Flora. Ever since, he has devoted his life to trying to establish who was responsible for the crime. He has, by his account, written here with the collaboration of Paul Biddulph, been thwarted at every turn. Consequently, he has developed a deep distrust of the British and American governments and their secret services, and, sadly, a like distrust of the working of the Scottish justice system, both the courts and the police. (...)

Obviously it was an act of terror. But who were the terrorists? From the start the assumption was that it was not the act of a lone terrorist group like the Red Brigade in Italy or the Badaar-Meinhoff gang in West Germany, but had been planned or at least authorised by a hostile state – a state hostile to the USA. The two favoured candidates were Iran and Libya, both of which had recent reason to plan the atrocity.

Meanwhile, the British Government refused requests to hold a Public Inquiry. Dr Swire was, and still is, naturally indignant. Yet, though there were other murky reasons for this refusal, the stated one was good. Can you properly hold such an enquiry, with witnesses on oath, without compromising an ongoing criminal investigation and any subsequent trial?

The investigation eventually focussed on Libya, and then on identified suspects. Where could a trial be held? Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh University proposed staging it a third country, but with Scottish judges and according to Scots Law. It seemed improbable that Libya would find this acceptable. With great courage, Dr Swire went to Libya himself, with a photograph of his murdered daughter, to make a personal appeal to the dictator, Colonel Gaddafi. Politics, and a desire to have economic sanctions lifted, persuaded Gaddafi to give way. Two suspects were therefore delivered to the Netherlands and the trial was underway.

As we all know, one suspect, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, the other not. Members off the bereaved American families expressed satisfaction, but, even as Dr Swire sat through the trial, his confidence in both the evidence offered and the verdict withered. This book tells us why. It tells, too, how he supported al-Megrahi’s appeals and requests for a re-trial, how he befriended him and called for his repatriation when he was diagnosed with cancer, and visited him in Libya before his death.

Though one distinguished Scots lawyer who observed the trial told me that on the evidence presented the only possible verdict had been delivered, an opinion which the Scottish courts have continued to uphold, it subsequently seemed clear that there were weaknesses it the Crown case and that the evidence of its chief witness was tainted and therefore cannot be thought reliable.

It is hard to read this book without concluding that Dr Swire is right, and that for reasons which are both understandable and shameful, successive British governments repeatedly obstructed the investigation and that they did so at the instigation of our American allies. That said, one has in any trial or account of an investigation to remember that things tend to be convincing when you are hearing only one side of the argument, one version of the story. This book recounts Dr Swine’s long and painful search for the truth about Lockerbie, and his version is persuasive. It is disturbing too because, if Dr Swire has it right, the Scottish judges who have now three times rejected appeals against the original verdict, have made it hard to have confidence in the integrity of our law. Lockerbie was a disaster; what caused it remains a mystery.

The Lockerbie Bombing, by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, Birlinn, 256pp, £14.99

"Not a court of justice but a court of politics"

[What follows is excerpted from a very long article published today on the website of The Herald. The full article can (and should) be read here.]

[Dr Jim] Swire says his short-term memory is not so good, but on the details of the evidence around Lockerbie, on the events that devastated his life, he is as sharp as a tack. He believes he knows the story behind the bombing of Pan-Am 103 and that the wrong man was convicted, the wrong country blamed.

Fingers, he said, should have been pointed at Iran, who organised it through the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), not Libya. There was even a strong motive: revenge for the shooting-down of the Airbus carrying 290 pilgrims by the USS Vincennes. Swire no longer believes that the full truth will come out in his lifetime. The sadness and anger he feels is not just at the loss of his daughter – it is also the rage of disillusionment. He rails against the opacity of the British establishment, institutions in which he had faith.

“I was the son of an Army officer,” he says, “who had been trained to look after parts of the empire during his professional career in the Royal Engineers. I thought that the establishment was working for the protection, at the very least, of its citizens. My belief was that the establishment of the UK was honourable and sought right over wrong.”

He recalls: “It wasn’t really till the end of the Camp Zeist trial of Megrahi [in which he was found guilty] that I was forced to give up that fabulous belief. I realised that was not a court of justice but a court of politics that was being held to enable the Americans to achieve their aim of diverting blame to Libya, away from Iran. One of the things that really annoys me now is that Britain was acting as a lapdog for America.” (...)

In the months following Flora’s death, Swire submerged himself in a sea of information – including technical details of the bomb and its mechanism.

“I’ve always been interested in electronics. I learned a lot about nasty plastic explosives.” he says.

From early on, he became convinced that the bomb had been one whose timer had a pressure-related switch which would trigger shortly after take-off.

“Soon after Lockerbie I got hold of an illustrated brochure from West Germany which told the British Department of Transport that the German police had recovered some specialised bombs in an operation called Autumn Leaves,” he recalls.

“It told how these bombs had a switch that could detect a drop in air pressure when an aeroplane took off and that around seven minutes from the time the wheels left the tarmac it would switch the timer on in the bomb and that the timers ran for approximately 30 minutes.”

He did the maths. “That makes a total of 37 minutes from leaving the ground before the thing went off. It was exactly that timing, 38 minutes into the flight, at which Pan-Am 103 blew up.”

The explanation that the bomb involved was one with a long running digital timer, supplied by MEBO and including circuit board produced by the Zurich company Thuring, which was at the heart of the Megrahi conviction, is one he believes too elaborate. “I think of William of Ockham. He said the simplest explanation consistent with the known facts is the most likely to be true.”

He argues that the bomb was made by terrorists linked to the PFLP-GC and that the clothing from Malta was deliberately put alongside the bomb in order to mislead. “I think,” he says, “that it all worked out according to the plans that were laid by Iran through the use of their surrogate terrorist group, the PFLP-GC.”

Key evidence supporting his theory, published in his book, some of which comes from the John Ashton book Megrahi: You are My Jury, includes a metallurgical examination done by experts commissioned by the Megrahi defence team, which showed that the circuit board fragment used as evidence did not come from a particular set of bombs supplied by MEBO to Libya, as previously had been argued, because it contained the wrong metal coating.

They also question the reliability of the identification of Megrahi by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, given records that show his attempts to get, and eventually receive, substantial money from the United States. (...)

The Lockerbie Bombing by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph is published by Birlinn.

Aye Write: The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice: Jim Swire in conversation with Kate Adie will be on May 21, 6pm.

The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice

[What follows is from 2021 Preview: History and Current Affairs on the website of Scottish publishers Birlinn:]

The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice, Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph (May)

The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was the largest attack on Britain since World War Two. 259 passengers and 11 townsfolk of Lockerbie were murdered. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime. He maintained his innocence until his death in 2012. Among the passengers was Flora, beloved daughter of Dr Jim Swire. Jim accepted American claims that Libya was responsible, but during the Lockerbie trial he began to distrust key witnesses and supposed firm evidence. Since then it has been revealed that the USA paid millions of dollars to two central identification witnesses, and the only forensic evidence central to the prosecution has been discredited. The book takes us along Dr Swire’s journey as his initial grief and loss becomes a campaign to uncover the truth behind not only a personal tragedy but one of the modern world’s most shocking events.

Further claims by Lockerbie figures of monitoring of communications

[A report in today's edition of The Times carries the headline Lockerbie professor says secret service agents snooped on him. It reads in part:]

A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.

Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.

Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)

Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.

After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.

Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.

“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.

“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”

Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”

Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.

Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,

He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.

“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”

The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.

He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”

A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.

The Foreign Office declined to comment.

An easy target required as some kind of scapegoat

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Kill 290 innocents: Get an award for bravery posted today on Peter Biddulph and Dr Jim Swire’s Lockerbie Truth blog:]

How do you kill 290 innocent people: men, women, including 66 children?

And how do you get a medal for bravery in action against America's imagined enemies?

July 1988.  This is how you do it.  See the maps, the paranoia, the stupidity. America called it an unfortunate mistake. Yet they gave the captain a medal for bravery in action against an enemy.

This was the reason for the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 290 innocent people.  At least, that's what CIA classified reports said for almost two years.

After that, America needed Syrian and Iranian support in the 1991 Gulf war. So an easy target was required as some kind of scapegoat. Those CIA reports were quietly shelved, and in November 1991, out of the blue, came evidence against Libya. (...)

Temporary loss of Lockerbie Truth website

A message from Peter Biddulph:

For reason(s) unknown, lockerbietruth.com is off-line. We are exploring the help sections to discover why. According to the domain company our account and domain are active. But so far, we can't discover what has happened.

Update: The website is once again accessible, 15.00 BST.

A welcome departure

[What follows is an item posted on this date in 2016 on Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph’s Lockerbie Truth website:]

Scotland's Lord Advocate [Frank Mulholland] is to step down from his position as Scotland's leading law officer. Click here for more…

His decision comes just days after a media conference held in Edinburgh's Dynamic Earth conference centre on 16th March, chaired by representatives of Justice for Megrahi.

At that conference there were calls for the Lord Advocate to consider his position, following a special police investigation - Operation Sandwood - into allegations of criminality [by police and prosecutors] and a key forensic witness during the Lockerbie trial of Libyan Baset al-Megrahi.

It is understood that the Operation Sandwood report will be available for consideration in approximately two months time. [RB: It is now expected later this year. Justice for Megrahi's liaison group has regular meetings with the investigation team and is confident about the rigour of the complex investigation.]

Recently in an unusual move, the National Scottish Police Force has appointed an independent QC to advise it on the Sandwood inquiry because it felt unable to ask Crown Office lawyers to assess the evidence of alleged wrongdoing against certain Crown officers.  Click here for more on this story.

Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2000 for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 259 passengers and eleven townspeople were killed by a bomb placed on flight Pan Am 103.

[RB: Frank Mulholland QC was installed as a judge of the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary on 15 December 2016. His disgraceful comments about Justice for Megrahi’s criminality allegations gravely compromised the Crown Office’s position in relation to Operation Sandwood.]