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Who Is Lockerbie: A Search for Truth's Dr. Jim Swire & Where Is He Now?
What has Dr. Jim Swire been up to since the tragic 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland?
Thirty-six years ago, just a few days before Christmas 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded at 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland. By the time the wreckage hit the ground, 270 people were dead, including the passengers, crew, and 11 people on the ground. Peacock's new five-part miniseries, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, follows the story of Dr. Jim Swire and his years-long quest to uncover the truth about the bombing, based upon his book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice.
In the series, Colin Firth plays Dr. Swire, a general practitioner whose 23-year-old daughter, Flora, was on Flight 103, headed to New York City to visit her boyfriend for the holidays. In the aftermath, Dr. Swire dedicated himself to shining a spotlight on the tragedy, often running afoul of world governments and the other victims’ families, many of whom don’t agree with Swire’s interpretation of events. Even now, nearly four decades later at the age of 89, Swire maintains his belief that the true culprits have yet to see justice.
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Who is Lockerbie: A Search for Truth's Dr. Jim Swire?
Swire rose to prominence in the weeks following the bombing, eventually shifting his focus away from medicine to become a U.K. advocate for survivors. Initially, the campaign focused on identifying the people responsible for the attack and gaps in security which allowed the attack to happen.
Swire went so far as to build a replica bomb and carry it on a flight from London to New York, on May 18, 1990, highlighting security gaps nearly two years after Flight 103. His fake bomb was a near exact replica of the one which killed 270 people in 1988, although Swire swapped out the Semtex explosives for marzipan, an almond-based dessert.
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After officials identified two suspects, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, Swire campaigned for their trial. Initially, Libya offered to detain the suspects and try them under Libyan law, but the United Kingdom declined. Eventually, a compromise was reached, and a trial took place at Camp Zeist, an old United States Air Force Base in the Netherlands, under Scottish Law. Swire was there every day, listening to the evidence and reaching his own verdict. On January 31, 2001, Fhimah was acquitted but Megrahi was convicted, something Swire considered a miscarriage of justice.
"I would never have dreamed that I would set out on an 18-year campaign. But I found -- still find -- the whole business of not unravelling who killed her [Flora], or why she wasn't protected, an insult to her memory. It means she didn't matter. She was just cannon fodder and happened to be in the way when something ghastly happened. And I can't take that line,” Swire told The Herald in 2007.
After the conviction, Swire switched gears to campaigning for Megrahi’s retrial and release, convinced that Megrahi and Libya weren’t actually responsible. That campaign led to a couple of appeals, though Megrahi’s conviction was upheld. In 2012, Swire traveled to Libya to meet with Megrahi before the latter’s death from prostate cancer. Megrahi had been freed from prison on compassionate grounds three years earlier, following his diagnosis.
Where is Dr. Jim Swire now?
Following Megrahi’s release from prison, Swire stated his intention to step back from what had become his life's focus, though those intentions were always colored by a lingering obsession still simmering beneath the surface.
"I've promised that I will disengage and I think I really have to, Jane knows that," Swire told the Telegraph, referring to his wife, Jane, portrayed by Catherine McCormack in the series. "But I don't think that can totally be the end of it. She understands that too. While there is still a judicial process going on in Scotland I have a loyalty to the people that I've been working with for all these years to get to the truth. If I'm to emerge from this I need to believe I have done the right thing by Flora."
Despite Megrahi’s conviction and the 2022 arrest of another Libyan coconspirator, Swire believes Iran and a Syrian-backed group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), were the actual parties responsible. Swire believes the attack on Flight 103 was retaliation for a U.S. operation which took down an Iranian passenger plane misidentified as a fighter jet six months earlier. Swire also cites a German Police raid two months before the Lockerbie bombing. The raid broke up a PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt, where police found cassette players converted into bombs and airline timetables. Flight 103 was one leg of a longer trans-Atlantic flight beginning in Frankfurt.
RELATED: Colin Firth Investigates a Terror Cover-Up in Official Trailer for Lockerbie Limited Series (WATCH)
Despite his stated intention to pull back once Megrahi was sent home, Swire has continued to campaign for transparency over the last decade. Recently, Swire called on the U.K. government to release all documentation related to the attack. "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,” Swire said, via the BBC.
Of course, it’s worth repeating that many of the other families disagree with Swire’s interpretation of events and believe the responsible parties have been and are being held accountable. A spokesperson for the U.S.-based Victims of Pan Am 103 reiterated their concerns over Swire’s narrative, calling it “a narrative that the great majority of us who lost loved ones do not align with and have fought very hard against."
Swire, meanwhile, maintains that people should review the available evidence and come to their own conclusions. He’s confident that the truth, whatever it is, will eventually come to light. And that the new miniseries will help to stoke public interest. “I hope it will cause people to think about where the truth is more likely to lie, and whether the conclusions we came to are more valid than the official version. Over the past 36 years, our attitude has always been to keep an open mind about aspects of this disaster," Swire said.
Lockerbie: A Search For Truth is now streaming exclusively on Peacock.
