New Sky series Lockerbie follows campaigner Jim Swire’s hunt for justice as he tries to understand the plane crash.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth focuses on Swire’s search for justice and is based on the book, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Swire and Peter Biddulph.
Spanning five episodes, the series follows Dr Jim Swire (Colin Firth) who fights for answers about the fatal crash which killed his daughter Flora and 269 others on December 21, 1988.
Only one man – intelligence operative Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from Tripoli – has ever been convicted over the attack. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with cancer. He died three years later in Libya.
But Swire has argued Megrahi was innocent. He believes Iran – and not Libya – downed the flight. During the series, which can be watched in full on Sky and NOW, we see Dr Swire sneak a fake bomb onboard a flight.
But did the incident really happen and why did he do it?
Did Jim Swire really take a fake bomb onboard a plane?
Doctor Jim Swire brought a fake bomb on a flight with him and the drama mostly shares an accurate story of what happened. He built a fake bomb inside a radio cassette player to match the one that had detonated on Pan Am Flight 103.
Dr Swire used marzipan inside to represent the explosive agent in the original bomb and took this device with him on a flight from Heathrow to New York City on May 18, 2000.
This was the same route that the flight his daughter Flora took and his cassette-recorder was examined by a security guard. The guard examined the device and only asked if the batteries had been removed, before the Lockerbie campaigner was allowed to pass.
Dr Swire was not stopped once along the way, a move that seems barely believable in comparison with today’s heightened security measures.
Dr Swire wanted to prove airport security had not improved since the Lockerbie bombing as authorities claimed it had. Family members of American victims wanted to keep his stunt private and other campaigners were unhappy with Dr Swire.
But the difference between reality and the show is the bomb stunt wasn’t made public until six weeks later. The Sky show depicts the news of the incident in episode two being made public instantly, which was likely done by writers to make narrative sense.
At the time, Los Angeles Times reported Dr Swire told journalists in a press conference in July 2000: “You simply cannot imagine how depressing it was flying over the Atlantic knowing that there could easily be a bomb in the cargo hold below.”
He added: “This was not a prank. It was a serious experiment, and unfortunately it succeeded. Here, 18 months after Lockerbie, one can take an identical device through security. I find that very depressing.”