Lockerbie film will aid justice, hopes father

[This is the headline over a report published (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Times.  It adds nothing to what appears here and here, but I reproduce it (a) because it is The Times and (b) because it doesn’t emanate from Magnus Linklater:]

The father of a young woman killed in the Lockerbie disaster has said that a new film about the tragedy could help to aid justice more than 25 years on.

Jim Swire’s daughter, Flora, 23, died on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie, killing 270 people. She had bought a last-minute ticket to spend Christmas in the US with her American boyfriend.

Dr Swire, 78, a veteran campaigner, said he hoped that the film, understood to be based on his fight for justice, could help “the truth to dawn” for the public over Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Although details of the film are being kept under wraps, Jim Sheridan, the six-times Oscar-nominated director, is lined up to be the director.

Dr Swire said he hoped that the project would help to bring evidence into the public domain that he believes casts doubt over the conviction of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.

Dr Swire said: “The film is important because it brings into the public domain more of the truth about what really happened instead of a package of lies clearly supported by US sources. This may turn out to be the way by which the truth dawns for the general public.”

Kathy Tedeschi, whose husband, Bill Daniels, was a passenger, criticised the move. “There are too many people, like the FBI and Scotland Yard, who investigated this case, and I firmly believe they knew what they were doing and they got the right man,” she said.

Dr Swire and other relatives are to attend a meeting in Glasgow this week to decide when they will submit a request for a third appeal to overturn Megrahi’s conviction.

New film will aid Jim Swire's 25-year quest for justice

[Today’s edition of Scotland on Sunday features an article headed Lockerbie movie will reveal truth of tragedy. It reads as follows:]

The father of a victim of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity has expressed hope that a new film about the tragedy will aid his 25-year quest for justice.

Dr Jim Swire, a veteran campaigner who lost his daughter in the Lockerbie disaster, believes the movie could be the way the “truth dawns” for the public over the 1988 incident.

The film is set to be made by Jim Sheridan, the six-times Oscar-nominated director of the acclaimed In The Name Of The Father and My Left Foot.

Swire believes the project will help bring into the public domain evidence which he believes casts doubt over the conviction of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who was found guilty in 2001 of murdering 270 people by blowing up Pan-Am Flight 103 in the skies above Lockerbie.

However, the decision to tell the narrative of Lockerbie through the central figure of Swire has been criticised by some US relatives of the tragedy, who believe Sheridan will be covering the “completely wrong story”.

Swire, 78, told Scotland on Sunday that although he felt “uncomfortable” about upsetting other families who take an opposing view to him over the circumstances surrounding the atrocity, he was compelled to “pursue the truth” in memory of his daughter Flora, who was 23 when she died.

Currently in the early stages of development, the drama has the working title of Lockerbie.

It comes as Swire and other relatives are preparing a presentation to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to request a third appeal to overturn Megrahi’s conviction, more than two years on from his death.

He will attend a meeting in Glasgow later this week with members of other families and lawyers to decide when they will submit the request.

Swire said: “The film is important because it brings into the public domain more of the truth about what really could have happened instead of a package of lies clearly supported by US sources.”

He added: “This may turn out to be the way by which the truth dawns for the general public.”

Those behind the production, he said, possess 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”.

Although details of the film are being kept under wraps, it is understood to focus on Swire’s search for justice and is based on an unpublished manuscript he has been working on for more than a decade alongside writer and researcher Peter Biddulph.

Richard Jeffs, a literary agent who has been assisting Biddulph, said: “It’s true to say that Peter Biddulph and Dr Jim Swire have worked extremely diligently for more than ten years to create a manuscript and we are still seeking to have it published.”

Those behind the film have been maintaining a low profile, mindful of the sensitivities surrounding Lockerbie. But after Sheridan confirmed his involvement in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, some US relatives expressed anger at the project.

Kathy Tedeschi, whose husband Bill Daniels was a passenger on Pan Am 103, said: “It kills me to think that they would go off and just tell some completely wrong story just because they like the way it sounds or there’s got to be another twist to it.

“There are too many people, like the FBI and Scotland Yard, who investigated this case, and I firmly believe they knew what they were doing and they got the right man.”

Swire said he accepted the film would upset some families who lost loved ones in Lockerbie but felt he could not abandon the project.

“I do feel uncomfortable about making them miserable by pursuing the truth, but that’s what I have to do in the name of my daughter,” he said. 

[An interesting article on the project can be found here on the Filmstalker website.]

Hollywood’s Pan Am 103 Truthers

[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the website of The Daily Beast.  It reads as follows:]

Acclaimed movie director Jim Sheridan has stirred up a hornet’s nest with his claim that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan spy held responsible for blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie and killing 270 people in December 1988, was innocent.

The FBI officials in charge of the US investigation as well as families and friends of the victims, 190 of whom were Americans, are especially troubled that the 65-year-old Sheridan is planning a feature film that will portray Megrahi—who died of cancer in May 2012 after being sprung from a Scottish prison on a controversial “compassionate release”—as blameless and wrongfully convicted of the crime.

“It kills me to think that they would go off and just tell some completely wrong story just because they like the way it sounds or there’s got to be another twist to it,” said Pan Am 103 widow Kathy Tedeschi, whose husband, Bill Daniels, was a passenger on the doomed flight. “There are too many people, like the FBI and Scotland Yard, who investigated this case, and I firmly believe they knew what they were doing and they got the right man.”

The Irish-born Sheridan, whose Oscar-nominated movies include In the Name of the Father and My Left Foot (for which Daniel Day-Lewis received the Best Actor award), told The Hollywood Reporter that he’s writing a screenplay with fellow Irish writer Audrey O’Reilly that will dramatize the experience of English physician Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died on Pan Am 103. Swire treated the ailing Megrahi in jail, became convinced of his innocence and launched a still-ongoing campaign to clear the Libyan’s name. [RB: Dr Swire visited Megrahi in jail, but he did not treat him.]

“It was this weird thing where you think you’ve found the person who killed your daughter, and then Jim ended up in the cell looking after him—because he’s a doctor and the guy wasn’t well—and it’s obvious as the nose on your face that Megrahi didn’t do it,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that Swire will be among his guests at the inaugural Dublin Arabic Film Festival, which Sheridan is staging in Ireland on May 8. The director’s Hollywood publicist said Monday he was traveling and unavailable for comment.

“Somebody should reach out to Mr. Sheridan and tell him he’s betting on the wrong horse,” said Frank Duggan, president of the nonprofit group, Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc, which represents relatives of the Americans killed in the Boeing 747’s explosion. “It would do a lot of damage,” added Duggan, who served as the family liaison for  the President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism, which was established in response to the Lockerbie tragedy. “It keeps stirring the pot for all the crazies and deniers to say, ‘Aha! See, we were right!’”

Retired FBI agent Richard Marquise, who led the US task force during the Lockerbie investigation and has written extensively about the case, said Sheridan seems to be aligning himself with “10,000 conspiracy theories, none of which has ever been tested in court. It’s a bunch of speculation and hypotheses and I feel bad that somebody is going to stake his reputation on it…Maybe that would sell a movie, but it wouldn’t be the truth.”

Retired FBI official Oliver “Buck” Revell, the bureau’s associate deputy director who rode herd on the American end of the Lockerbie investigation, told The Daily Beast: “As with our Hollywood filmmakers, truth has little or nothing to do with filmmaking and most documentaries. I am well satisfied to let the verdict and evidence that supported it stand. I do favor the investigation continuing, for I am certain that many of Megrahi’s superiors were complicit in this terrible crime.”

Megrahi, who when Flight 103 exploded was head of security for Libya’s national airline and allegedly a Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted of 270 counts of murder, and sentenced to life in prison, by a three-judge Scottish panel in January 2001. The evidence against him was circumstantial; a shopkeeper in Malta, where the bomb was allegedly put aboard the 747, identified Megrahi as the man who purchased the clothes that were found in the suitcase where the device had been concealed. Megrahi also had a business relationship with a Swiss company that manufactured the device’s timer, and he had traveled to Malta from Tripoli on a false passport—all damning pieces of evidence.

Megrahi consistently asserted his innocence. He appealed the verdict and lost, and a second appeal was abandoned after his defense team decided it might hamper legal efforts for an early release. Over bitter protests from the Obama administration, Scottish officials ultimately released him in August 2009, on the grounds that he was suffering from advanced prostate cancer and had only an estimated three months to live.

He was flown back to Libya on Muammar Qaddafi’s personal jet, accompanied by Qaddafi’s son Saif, and greeted by a triumphal celebration at the airport—a spectacle that enraged US government officials and American relatives of the Lockerbie dead. He survived another three years, living out his last days in a posh villa in Tripoli. Ironically, he outlasted Qaddafi, who was killed in a popular uprising in October 2011, after being toppled from power and dragged bruised and bleeding through the streets.

Dr Swire is among the more conspicuous supporters of Megrahi’s innocence and alternative theories of the Flight 103 disaster, which include claims that the explosion was the result of a drug deal gone bad, the work of Palestinian terrorists, or even retaliation by the Iranians, whose civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, was shot down without justification by a US Navy missile cruiser, killing all 290 people aboard, just 5 1/2 months before the Lockerbie disaster.

“Dr Swire is not a credible figure,” Duggan said, adding that US investigators initially liked the Iranian theory but were unable to find any evidence to corroborate it. “I’d like to say to Sheridan that you need to learn the facts before you assume that Megrahi was innocent. You need to look at other family members besides Dr Swire. I don’t know any American family members who agree with him.”

[Frank Duggan, a man whose knowledge of the facts of Lockerbie is so sketchy that he was able to be shown up on air by George Galloway, says that Dr Jim Swire is not a credible figure.  That really is rich!]

Jim Sheridan plans Pan Am terror attack film

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the website of The Hollywood Reporter.  It reads as follows:]

Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan is lining up a movie about the 1988 Pan Am terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which left 270 passengers and town residents dead.

Sheridan said he is working on a script with Irish screenwriter Audrey O’Reilly and that the film would "definitely happen in the next few years."

The attack continues to occupy hearts and minds on both sides of the Atlantic, as many of the dead were American and British.

"It’s a drama basically looking at the effect on a family of terrorism,” said Sheridan.

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker said that the narrative is set to follow the real-life story of Jim Swire, an English doctor whose daughter Flora was among the dead when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish village on its way from London to the US.

Swire soon became a leading campaigner in the hunt to discover the truth about the terror attack and was unconvinced by the trial and the accusations leveled at Libya.

Eventually the doctor would go on to meet Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the alleged Libyan intelligence officer who was jailed for the bombing, as a working medic.

Megrahi was released by the Scottish authorities on compassionate grounds to return to Libya to die in 2012 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

"It was this weird thing where you think you’ve found the person who killed your daughter, and then Jim ended up in the cell looking after him -- because he’s a doctor and the guy wasn’t well -- and it’s obvious as the nose on your face that Megrahi didn’t do it," said Sheridan.

Lockerbie recently returned to the headlines with a report in UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph claiming that the bombing was actually carried out by a Syria-based terror group under orders from Iran.

Abolghassem Mesbahi, a former Iranian intelligence officer who's since defected to Germany, claimed that the plane was downed in response to a US Navy strike just six months earlier on an Iranian commercial jet that killed 290 people.

"It’s scary what they didn’t reveal to us at the time," said Sheridan. "It doesn’t really matter, the people are dead and you can’t bring them back to life. But in the future, we need clear investigations of these things or else you’re going to end up with flight MH370 [the missing Malaysia Airlines plane]."

Swire is scheduled to be among the special guests at Sheridan’s inaugural Dublin Arabic Film Festival, which kicks off in the Irish capital’s Light House Cinema on May 8.

Other speakers at the four-day event are set to include Omar Sharif, who opens the festival with his acclaimed 2003 drama Monsieur Ibrahim, and Hany Abu-Assad, the director of Oscar-nominated Palestinian dramas Omar and Paradise Now.

Sheridan's 1989 debut, My Left Foot, garnered Oscars for Daniel Day-Lewis and co-star Brenda Fricker.

Sheridan followed up with In the Name of the Father, which won the Golden Bear at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival, and his resume also includes The Boxer, In America, Get Rich or Die Tryin' and Brothers.

[A further report on the same website can be read here.]

Megrahi prosecutor to become Scottish judge

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads in part:]

Four high-profile QCs, including the former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd and Tommy Sheridan's former defence counsel, Maggie Scott, are about to become high court judges.

Mr Boyd, now Lord Boyd, who led the prosecution of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, was recently criticised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for failing to disclose crucial information to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's defence. He rejected the claim. [RB: An account of Colin Boyd QC's conduct at one stage of the Lockerbie trial can be read here.]

Ms Scott, who was sacked by Mr Sheridan during his perjury trial in 2010, and led Megrahi's recent appeal case and the defence in many high-profile cases, including Ice Cream War murderer Thomas "TC" Campbell and more recently Nat Fraser, as well as Luke Mitchell, who was convicted of murdering teenager Jodi Jones in January 2005.

The Herald understands Michael Jones and David Burns have also been recommended for the appointments.

A source close to the process said: "Colin Boyd and Maggie Scott are two of the people the Judicial Appointments Board has recommended to the First Minister. It would be highly unusual for ministers to reject such a recommendation. Their appointments are expected to be confirmed shortly."

Lord Boyd resigned as Lord Advocate in 2006. His decision was seen as unusual and triggered speculation he was concerned about the inquiry into the Shirley McKie case, in which a police officer was wrongly accused of leaving a fingerprint at a murder scene and lying about it.

Another potential reason raised was the imminent decision on whether the Lockerbie case would be referred back for a fresh appeal.

Lord Boyd denied he was leaving because of the McKie fingerprint investigation or any other case and said it was simply "time to move on".

Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing, said: "I understand the limited personnel and resources of the Scottish criminal justice system but I am surprised that Colin Boyd would have been put forward as a potential judge.

"In support of his colleagues on the prosecution team, it seemed to me that Boyd made a statement to the court [at Zeist] which was later shown by the revelations in the CIA cables to be untrue. It was over a matter of extreme importance because it concerned the credibility of the prosecution's star witness." (…)

Maggie Scott has described herself as "relatively rebellious". Following her sacking by Sheridan in 2010, the former MSP represented himself and was convicted of perjury in his defamation action against the News of the World in 2006.

Mr Jones, QC, acted for the News of the World in the Sheridan case and the owners of the Rosepark care home in South Lanarkshire after 14 residents died in a fire. Mr Burns recently acted for Craig Roy, who was convicted of murdering Jack Frew. [RB: David Burns QC was second senior counsel for Abdelbaset Megrahi at the Zeist trial and at the first appeal.]

Maggie Scott, QC, said last night that she could not comment. Lord Boyd could not be contacted.

[Two other members of the prosecution team, Alastair Campbell QC and Alan Turnbull QC have already become High Court judges. The principal procurator fiscal at the trial, Norman McFadyen, has become a sheriff.  A commentary by Lucy Adams in the same newspaper headlined Judges are no strangers to controversy focuses particularly on Colin Boyd’s controversial role in the Lockerbie trial.]