Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire has said he’s behind a new TV drama about the atrocity because he will never stop trying to get to the truth.
His daughter Flora, 23, was a passenger on Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up 31,000ft above Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.
Thirty-three years on from Britain’s worst terror attack, Jim and his wife Jane, 82, are helping with a new Sky mini-series based on his memoir and the couple’s tireless search for justice.
Jim, 85, said: “When I first decided I would risk going to see Colonel Gaddafi, who I and everyone else believed was virtually the devil-incarnate and the originator of the atrocity at Lockerbie, I remember wondering, ‘What would Flora think of me if I should die now?’
“I’m sure she would have thought, ‘At least my father is trying to find out the truth about why I was murdered.’
“This TV series is another part of that journey and I’m sure Flora would approve of it too.”
Just after the tragedy, some family members of those who died launched a campaign for truth and justice.
Jim became the public face of the group and accused the UK and US governments of a cover-up.
His investigations and ongoing battle to uncover what happened saw him not only meet Gaddafi
several times but meet successive prime ministers and even befriend Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who he believes was wrongly convicted of the bombing.
Last year he published a memoir with writer Peter Biddulph, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search For Justice.
The story has inspired a five-part TV series which will be written by Academy Award nominee Jim
Sheridan, who directed My Left Foot, and his daughter Kirsten Sheridan.
The drama will focus on Jim – and how his fight for justice pushed his marriage, health and sanity to the edge. It will be a hard watch for his family, including younger daughter Cathy, 54, and son William, 49.
Jim, who has a family home on Skye, said: “If we can draw attention to the failures that happened in this case, and if we can do anything to improve on those failures, then that’s always worth striving for, even if it brings a little discomfort to those who lost loved ones in this catastrophe.”
Screenwriters Jim and Kirsten said: “Over 30 years on, this series takes an intimate and very personal look at the aftermath of the disaster, and we are grateful to all of those, particularly Jim and Jane, who have entrusted us to tell their story, and the story of their loved ones, on screen.”
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