Father’s search for truth after daughter killed in Britain’s deadliest terror attack
“All I was after was the truth,” says Dr Jim Swire.
The retired GP’s 35-year search for answers has seen him board a US-bound flight from Heathrow carrying a replica bomb, hold a secret meeting with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and collapse in shock after a criminal trial at a former military base in the Netherlands.
His 23-year-old daughter was among the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing on 21 December 1988 – the deadliest ever UK terrorist attack.
“I think I know who was responsible for killing her and I think I can prove it,” the old Etonian, now 87, says in a new four-part Sky documentary.
He keeps the evidence he has collected in cardboard folders in a metal filing cabinet in an office in the Cotswolds home he shares with his wife Jane.
‘No one had really heard of Lockerbie’
Flora “was everything a parent could wish for,” says Mrs Swire.
She was about to turn 24 and studying medicine when she set off to the US to meet her boyfriend for Christmas.
“Everything was booked up, except there were plenty of seats available on a certain flight known as Pan Am 103,” says Dr Swire, sitting in a leather armchair in his cottage, overlooking the rugged coastline on the Isle of Skye.
Less than 40 minutes after taking off from Heathrow on the transatlantic leg to New York’s JFK, the Boeing 747 was 31,000ft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when the aircraft was almost instantly destroyed by a massive blast.
The wrecked nose section of the Pan-Am Boeing 747 lies in a Scottish field at Lockerbie, near Dumfries
Residents remember “a huge explosion” before the sky lit up with “bright red flames” and a “great big mushroom ball of fire”.
“Before 1988, no one had really heard of Lockerbie,” says Colin Dorrance, who was a young 19-year-old recruit just three months into his police career at the time.
“Life here was just undramatic.”
That all changed at 7.03pm that evening. All 259 passengers and crew members on board the plane were killed along with 11 people in the town as windows were blown in and wreckage destroyed their homes.
Locals are still haunted by images of the bodies that fell from the sky, some still strapped in their seats as they landed in gardens and fields.
The smell of aviation fuel hung thick in the air as they surveyed the carnage strewn with luggage and the Christmas presents victims were carrying for loved ones.
270 people died on 21 December 1988
Peter Giesecke can’t shake the image of the woman still wearing one high-heeled shoe, while Margaret and Hugh Connell became “attached” to the man they found in a field near their home, watching over him for 24 hours until his body was recovered.
“We developed quite a love for ‘our boy’, not knowing who he was,” says Mr Connell.
As news of the disaster broke, relatives were desperate to know whether their loved ones were on board.
Unable to get through to Heathrow, Dr Swire rang the Pan Am desk in New York and could hear “chaos in the background and women screaming” as families of the victims, many of whom were American, received the terrible news.
Dr Swire, tall and slim with a full head of white hair, is measured as he recalls the kindness of the pathologist who allowed him to see his daughter’s body in the local ice rink, where the postmortems were being carried out.
“She was barely recognisable,” he says, the grief which still bubbles just under the surface after all these years coming to the fore as he tells how he was allowed to take a lock of Flora’s hair.
“Human kindness can be very important when these things happen,” he adds, with tears in his eyes.
Jim and Jane Swire
‘Nothing quite adds up’
It took investigators a week to discover the disaster was caused by a bomb in a terrorist attack against the US – the biggest in the country’s history until 9/11.
“My first reaction was of fury, which led me to want to find the truth,” says Dr Swire. And that did a lot to help with the grief because I was busy doing things. It was rather how, I think, Flora would’ve reacted.”
The prime suspect was Iran, but they have always denied any involvement in the attack.
Iran had vowed to take revenge for the accidental downing of an Iran Air passenger flight by the US Navy in the Gulf in July 1988, which killed 290 people.
But the sprawling international investigation was just beginning.
“Nothing is what it seems in the Lockerbie story, nothing quite adds up,” says local reporter David Johnston, one of the first journalists on the scene.
It soon emerged a call was made to the US embassy in the Finnish capital that a Pan Am plane from Frankfurt to the US would be bombed in what was known as the “Helsinki warning”, with American diplomats in Europe told of a threat.
Passengers and luggage were transferred at Heathrow to Pan Am 103 from a feeder flight originating in Frankfurt and Dr Swire believes the plane was only two-thirds full because people were “warned off”. “We weren’t warned. Nobody told us,” he says.
“I felt I had a right to know the truth about how my daughter had come to be killed and why she wasn’t protected against being killed. And those were the bases on which we very soon found we were being richly and profusely deceived by the authorities.”
Flowers at the 2018 commemoration service
The ‘biggest crime scene in history’
Wreckage from the plane was spread over 845 square miles in what Richard Marquise, who headed up the FBI Lockerbie taskforce, describes as “the biggest crime scene in history”.
Investigators concluded the bomb was in a cassette player that was wrapped in clothes and put inside a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase.
A fragment of Toshiba circuit board pointed to possible links to tape recorder bombs made by Iran-backed PLFP-GC, a Palestinian terror group active in the 1970s and 1980s, who were suspected of carrying out the attack for the Iranians.
Dr Swire took his own replica bomb – the explosive material substituted for marzipan – on a plane from Heathrow to the US to highlight the security flaws.
“It was an obsession,” he admits. “All I was after was the truth of why our beautiful daughter had been murdered and I was bloody determined to find out who did it.”
The kindness of the women in Lockerbie
Meanwhile, in Lockerbie volunteers were cleaning the mud, blood and aviation fuel from the victims’ belongings left scattered amid the wreckage and bodies.
Clothes were washed, pressed and folded, jewellery was polished, and the pages of a tattered bible were individually ironed.
Miami-based Victoria Cummock, whose husband John died on board, was surprised to receive his clean laundry.
“I got back his personal effects due to the kindness of the women in Lockerbie,” she says.
Victoria Cummock
The Malta connection and the Libyans
Charred clothes which were packed with the bomb were traced to a shop in Malta, and two Libyan suspects came into the FBI’s sights.
Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had a motive for the attack after an American bombing in capital Tripoli and a tiny fragment of circuit board, called PT35, found embedded in a shirt collar 20 miles from Lockerbie, was traced to Swiss electronics expert Edwin Bollier, who said he sold a batch of timers to the rogue state.
After CIA asset Majid Giaka, a Libyan double agent codenamed “Puzzle Piece”, said he saw the suspects with a brown suitcase at Malta airport the day before the bombing, two men were charged.
But there was little hope of Colonel Gaddafi handing over Abdelbaset al Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, a security official for Libyan Arab Airlines, to face trial.
Telling only his wife for fear he would be intercepted by the security services, Dr Swire travelled to Libya to meet the dictator face to face in an attempt to persuade him.
“I was pretty crazy at that time,” he says. “I was so determined that I wasn’t scared, nervous yes, but not scared.”
Dr Swire says he heard the “click, click, click” of Gaddafi’s female soldiers readying their AK47s as he opened his briefcase to reveal pictures of his daughter, then again at the end of the meeting when he pinned a badge reading “Lockerbie the truth must be known” to the Libyan leader’s lapel.
The meeting had no obvious impact, and it was not until 11 years after the bombing that Gaddafi finally agreed to extradite the suspects in the face of tough economic sanctions imposed in response to the atrocity.
Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed by rebel forces in 2011
‘The shock was so great I collapsed’
The trial was held at former US Airforce base Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, under Scottish law, and Dr Swire rented an apartment with Rev John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died on board Pan Am 103, to follow the evidence closely over 84 days.
Supergrass Giaka crumbled in the witness box as he was shown to be a liar and a fantasist, while Bollier couldn’t confirm he supplied the bomb timer to Libya.
“I couldn’t continue to believe that there was a cogent body of evidence that justifies the finding of either of those two men guilty,” says Dr Swire.
John Mosey
The Scottish judges cleared Fhimah but found al Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder for which he was later handed a life sentence.
“The shock of the verdict initially was so great I collapsed,” says Dr Swire.
Families of the American victims were pleased with the guilty verdict and FBI agents felt vindicated by the finding Libya was behind the bombing.
But Dr Swire “couldn’t believe three senior Scottish judges could convict someone on that evidence”, which he believes to be “false” in order to frame Libya to protect the West’s fragile relationship with Iran.
“I wasn’t prepared to have anything associated with Flora’s death as untrue and debasing as the story that was raised by the authorities against those two men,” he says.
“I was very shaken up psychologically by the fact I knew al Megrahi was innocent, and the authorities protected her killers.”
Sky News has contacted the Scottish Crown Prosecution Service for a response.
The cockpit section of the Pan Am Boeing 747 lies on Banks Hill near Lockerbie
‘The truth is very simple’
In 2009, al Megrahi was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, having spent just nine years behind bars.
But some believe he was freed in exchange for an oil deal with Libya.
He received a hero’s welcome when he landed back home with Scottish flags waved as he got off the plane.
Families of the American victims were disgusted but Dr Swire was happy and even visited him before he died in 2012.
From his Zurich office, Mr Bollier now claims the PT35 fragment is a fake and says he believes police tampered with the evidence.
He also says he was shown a brochure with two briefcases full of cash and offered 4 million US dollars by Mr Marquise, but the ex-FBI agent insists he didn’t offer him “one cent”.
For Dr Swire “the truth is very simple but the consequences of trying to conceal the truth are very complicated”.
“I think she (Flora) was killed by a bomb which was ordained by the Iranian authorities,” he says.
“They had had an Airbus destroyed by an American missile and 290 people killed. Therefore, they were lusting for revenge.”
Jim Swire
Former CIA operations officer John Holt, the one-time handler of Giaka, agrees. “I have no doubt it was Iran,” he says, adding that the PLFP-GC carried out the attack on their behalf.
However, most people still believe the official narrative and Libya has officially accepted responsibility, agreeing to a $2.7bn (£1.95bn) compensation deal with the victims’ families, albeit with expectations sanctions would be lifted.
Dr Swire’s search for answers continues as the alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir al Marimi is in US custody awaiting trial accused of being the third man involved in the terrorist attack.
Back in Lockerbie, the Connells did find out who their “boy” was – New Yorker Frank Ciulla.
The couple have formed a lasting friendship with his widow Mary Lou Ciulla and daughter Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, who are greeted with warm smiles and hugs as they step into their home from the Scottish drizzle.
“I felt that he was alone somewhere and yet when I came here, he wasn’t alone,” says Mrs Ciulla, her friend Mrs Connell’s arm around her shoulder. “Mine was actually… a nice story.”
Radicalised nine-year-olds, teenagers mixing incel culture with extreme right ideologies and a Muslim who idolises Hitler – this is just some of the casework of those tasked with deradicalising young extremists in the UK.
Monday will mark 20 years since the 7/7 attacks on the London transport network when four suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured 770 others.
A year later the government set up its deradicalisation programme Prevent as part of its counter-terrorism strategy.
Sky News has spoken to two leading intervention providers (IPs) at Prevent who both say their work is getting ever more complex and the referrals younger.
The Metropolitan Police’s Prevent co-ordinator, Detective Superintendent Jane Corrigan, has also told Sky News it is “tragic” that when it comes to terrorism, “one in five of all our arrests is a child under 17”.
She believes parents should talk to their children about what they are reading and seeing online.
“Parents instinctively know when something doesn’t feel right when their child is becoming withdrawn or isolated – not wanting to engage,” she says.
People worried that someone they know has thoughts that could lead to terrorism can refer them to Prevent.
File pic: iStock
‘A pic-n-mix of ideologies’
Home Office figures show 11-year-olds are the largest age group to get referred.
Concerning cases are passed on to IPs such as Nigel Bromage who told Sky News: “Often there will be a pic-n-mix of ideologies.
“From my own examples and experience, we are aware of people looking at the incel culture and mixing that with some far-right elements.”
Sky’s Jason Farrell with intervention provider Nigel Bromage, who was exposed to extremism when he was a child
Incels, meaning “involuntary celibates” are men who have been unable to have a relationship with women despite wanting one and become misogynistic and hateful as a result.
Like many IPs, Mr Bromage from Birmingham comes from an extremist background himself, having once been a regional organiser for the proscribed Neo-Nazi group Combat 18.
For him too, it began as a child.
“It all started with someone giving me a leaflet outside my school gates,” Mr Bromage says.
“It told me a horrific story about a mum getting killed by an IRA bomb explosion – and at the end of the leaflet there was a call to action which said: ‘If you think it’s wrong then do something about it’.”
He developed a hatred for Irish republican terrorism which morphed into general racism and national socialism.
“At the very end I thought I was going to go to prison, or I would end up being hurt or even killed because of my political beliefs,” he says.
Mr Bromage says his youngest case involved a nine-year-old
Boy, 9, groomed by his brother
Mr Bromage reveals his youngest case was a nine-year-old who had been groomed by his brother.
“He was being shown pro-Nazi video games, and his older brother was saying ‘when I go to prison or I get in trouble – they you’re the next generation – you’re the one who needs to continue the fight’,” he says.
“Really, he had no interest in the racist games – he just wanted to impress his brother and be loved by his brother.”
Every year, nearly 300 children who are 10 or younger are referred to Prevent.
Home Office figures show that over the last six years 50% of referrals were children under the age of 18.
Eleven-year-olds alone make up a third of total referrals, averaging just over 2,000 a year, with the figure rising even higher in the most recent stats.
Another IP, Abdul Ahad, specialises in Islamic extremism.
He says the catalyst for radicalisation often comes from events aboard.
Ten years ago, it was Syria, more recently Gaza.
“It is often a misplaced desire to do something effective – to matter, to make a difference. It gives them purpose, camaraderie and belonging as well – you feel part of something bigger than you,” he says.
Fifty-two people were killed on 7 July 2005 when four suicide bombers blew up three London Underground trains and a bus. Pic: PA
Clients want someone to ‘hear them’
Some of his clients “don’t fit into any particular box”.
“I’m working with a guy at the minute, he’s a young Muslim but he idolises Hitler and he’s written a manifesto,” he says.
“When you break it down, some people don’t know where they fit in, but they want to fit in somewhere.”
Mr Ahad says the young individual mostly admires Hitler’s “strength” rather than his ideologies and that he was drawn to darker characters in history.
Often his clients are very isolated and just want someone to “hear them”, he adds.
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Intervention provider Abdul Ahad specialises in Islamic extremism
Mr Ahad is also an imam who preaches at the Al-Azar Mosque in South Shields, a well-regarded centre for community cohesion and outreach.
He uses his understanding of the Islamic faith in his Prevent sessions to help guide his referrals away from extreme interpretations of the Koran by offering “understanding and context”.
He says: “We quote the correct religious texts – we explain their responsibility as a Muslim living in the UK and we re-direct their energies into something more constructive.”
Common theme of mental health issues
Mental health problems are a common theme among those referred to Prevent including depression and autism.
A recent inquest into the death of autistic teenager Rhianan Rudd found she took her own life after being radicalised by two white supremacists.
Her mother was critical of Prevent, as well as the police and MI5 after she had referred her daughter to the deradicalisation programme and Rhianan was subsequently charged with terrorism offences.
Last month a coroner found some failings in the processes around protecting Rhianan, but none of them attributable to Rhianan taking her own life.
Det Supt Corrigan says a referral doesn’t mean individuals end up being arrested or on an MI5 watchlist.
She says: “You’re not reporting a crime, but you are seeking support. I would say the earlier you can come in and talk to us about the concerns you have the better. Prevent is just that – it is a pre-criminal space.
“It’s tragic when you see the number of young people being arrested for very serious charges. Just look at terrorism – one in five of all our arrests is a child under the age of 17. We need to think about how we respond to that.”
Prevent has been criticised for failures such as when Southport killer Axel Rudakabana failed to be recognised as needing intervention despite three referrals, or when MP David Amiss’ killer Ali Harbi Ali went through the programme and killed anyway.
Axel Rudakubana failed to be recognised as needing intervention despite three referrals. Pic: Merseyside police
It’s harder to quantify its successes.
Mr Ahad says he understands why the failures hit the headlines, but he believes the programme is saving lives.
He says: “I think the vast majority of people get radicalised online because they are sitting in their room reading all this content without any context or scholarly input. They see one version of events and they get so far down the rabbit hole they can’t pull themselves out.
“I really wish Prevent was around when I was a young, lost 15-year-old because there was nothing around then. It’s about listening to people engaging with them and offering them a way of getting out of that extremism.”
File pic: iStock
‘Radicalisation can happen in days to weeks’
Det Supt Corrigan says: “I’ve sat with parents whose children have gone on to commit the most horrendous crimes and they all spotted something.
“Now, with hindsight, they wished they had done something or acted early. That’s why we created this programme, because radicalisation can happen in days to weeks.”
Twenty years on from 7/7 the shape of the terrorist threat has shifted, the thoughts behind it harder to categorise, but it is no less dangerous.
UK
Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal
Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.
A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.
Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.
Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk. Pic: Reuters
Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo (right) arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Pic: PA
Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.
His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.
Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.
Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.
Manchester United and Portugal player Bruno Fernandes. Pic: PA
Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk and Liverpool’s player Andrew Robertson. Pic: Reuters
Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.
Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.
‘More than a friend’
In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”
Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”
Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.
‘With us forever’
Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.
“Their spirit will be with us forever.”
The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.
He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.
“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”
The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.
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No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.
Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.
Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.
Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.
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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?
Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
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Reeves is ‘totally’ up for the job
Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.
“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”
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