The father of a victim of the Lockerbie bombing has urged the US to “look afresh” at the events which led up to the 1988 terrorist attack, in light of “what the evidence shows”.
Dr Jim Swire launched his campaign for justice after the death of his daughter Flora in the attack, which claimed the lives of 270 people after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over the Scots town.
He and other bereaved families believe the bombing was actually a response from Iran, after the US shot down an Iranian jet.
The only person ever convicted was Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in 2001, who died in 2012 after a compassionate release from prison following a cancer diagnosis. Abu Agila Masud, also from Libya, is due to go on trial in the US in May 2025, accused of helping to make the bomb.
Dr Swire’s book, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice, has been adapted into a five-part series starring Colin Firth in the main role, which was first shown on Sky on Thursday January 2.
He has argued that Megrahi was innocent, and believes the attack was carried out by Iran, in retaliation to their own Iran Air Airbus being shot down by US missile cruiser USS Vincennes in July 1988, which killed 290 people.
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Speaking to the BBC’s Breakfast programme on Saturday, Dr Swire said: “Five months later, Lockerbie happened.
“The facts seem to point towards Iran’s having engaged with terrorist groups, the chief one being the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command), didn’t worry about what that means, and get those people to act as surrogates, to get revenge.”
Speaking about the new series, Dr Swire added: “I can only be astonished by the accuracy and the telling way in which all these people working together have produced so accurate a copy of what we’ve tried to do in our small way at one end of the scale, and where now we hope at the other end of the scale that a great country like America may come to look afresh at what happened in light of what the evidence actually shows.”
He said that he hopes the message behind the series is to get past an “era of revenge”.
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