Lockerbie victim’s father calls on Starmer to publish secret documents

The father of a Lockerbie bombing victim has called on Sir Keir Starmer to publish everything the UK government knows about the atrocity.

This Saturday is the 36th anniversary of the attack, which claimed 270 lives four days before Christmas in 1988.

Public interest in Lockerbie will be rekindled next year by two television dramas and the trial of a Libyan suspect in the United States.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died on the plane, says the government can no longer justify withholding information on the case.

“One thing we can do is ask the government of today to release all the documentation about Lockerbie,” said the former GP.

“That would be a tremendous help. Here we are, 36 years down the road, and we know a lot of material has been kept out of public view.

“Why isn’t it in the public interest to release it after 36 years? I think that’s something a lot of people would think is pretty fishy.”

A Sky TV production – Lockerbie: A Search for Truth – will reach screens from 2 January. The actor Colin Firth plays Dr Swire.

The series is based on Dr Swire’s book Lockerbie: A Father’s Search for Justice.

He hopes the dramatisation will raise greater awareness and spark fresh public debate about what happened in Lockerbie.

It will be followed later in the year by a six-part BBC series.

Then in May, a real-life drama will start to unfold in a federal court in Washington, where Abu Agila Masud will stand accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103.

The US authorities allege Masud acted alongside his fellow countryman Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the plot so far.

Megrahi was found guilty of mass murder after standing trial at a Scottish court in the Netherlands and jailed for life, only to be released on compassionate grounds eight years later by the Scottish government. He died from cancer in 2012.

The Libyan’s conviction was upheld after appeals in 2002 and 2021.

Dr Swire believes that the bombing was carried out by a Syrian-backed group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by an American warship earlier in 1988.

All 290 people on board the plane were killed and Iran swore revenge.

Two months before Lockerbie, German police broke up a cell from the PFLP-GC in Frankfurt. Its members were caught with radio cassette players converted into bombs and airline timetables. The feeder flight for Pam Am 103 had originated in Frankfurt.

Scottish and US investigators spent months investigating the PFLP-GC before the evidence trail led them to Libya and Megrahi.

The defence at the first Lockerbie trial tried to convince the court that the Palestinians were responsible but their argument was rejected by the Scottish judges.

Many people over many years have viewed Lockerbie as a tangled web of international terrorism, shadowy intelligence agencies and competing national priorities.

In the past, UK governments have prevented the publication of secret documents which were said to have indicated that Palestinian militants were involved in bombing the plane.

In 2020, the then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab imposed public interest immunity certificates on the documents, in the belief that their disclosure would cause serious harm to the UK’s national security and international relations.

Scotland’s appeal court examined their contents and ruled that their limited value to the defence did not outweigh the public interest.

The prosecution case at Megrahi’s trial, which will be repeated in Washington, was that Libyan intelligence agents smuggled the bomb onto a flight from Malta in an unaccompanied suitcase. It went through the luggage system at Frankfurt and was loaded onto Pan Am 103 at Heathrow.

A fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage was identified as part of a Swiss-made bomb timer which had been sold to Libya.

Dr Swire says there is forensic evidence from “top notch British experts” proving that the fragment did not come from those timers, which he argues would fatally undermine the case against Libya and Megrahi.

Asked for a response, Scotland’s prosecution service, the Crown Office, referred to a recent statement by the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC.

She said: “The trial court held that this act of state-sponsored terrorism was orchestrated by the Libyan government and that Megrahi was involved with others.

“That verdict has been the subject of intense scrutiny and has been upheld twice in the appeal court.”

Within days of the bombing in 1988, it emerged that the US Embassy in Helsinki had been warned of an imminent bomb attack on a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States.

Dr Swire says his daughter Flora was able to book a last-minute seat on pre-Christmas flight to New York that was only two thirds full.

The 88-year-old’s position on Lockerbie, his face-to-face negotiations with the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi and his eventual friendship with Megrahi have been supported over the years by some of the other relatives but have also earned him the enmity of other bereaved relatives, particularly in the United States.

Some of them have expressed anger over the forthcoming Sky drama.

Dr Swire said: “The more people look at what happened at Lockerbie the happier I’ll be.

“You can make your own decision about whether you believe the official version or the alternative that we’ve laboured so far to find.

“I hope this the Sky series will do that because I’m getting pretty long in the tooth and I can’t go on doing this forever.”

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said:

“The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 was truly abhorrent and the government’s deepest sympathies remain with the victim’s families and loved ones.

“We do not comment on the contents of archive files, but follow the process of opening files as set out in public record legislation”.