The True Story Behind the Lockerbie Terror Attack and the Decades Long Search for Answers

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 passengers and crew were killed, plus another 11 died when the wreckage fell over their homes. Scottish police and FBI agents found that a bomb was concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player, which had been placed in a Samsonite suitcase. To this day, the Lockerbie bombing remains the deadliest terror attack on the U.K.

The Lockerbie bombing—and the divisive legal proceedings that followed—is the subject of a new miniseries on Peacock premiering Jan. 2 called Lockerbie: A Search For Truth. Adapted from the 2021 nonfiction book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, the five-episode miniseries stars Colin Firth as Swire, a physician who dedicates his life to uncovering the truth about the bombing that killed his daughter Flora (played by Rosanna Adams), who was flying to New York to spend Christmas with her boyfriend.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the Lockerbie story and Swire’s ensuing detective work is how difficult it was for the victims’ families to obtain answers. Even once authorities in Britain and the US alleged the bombing had been an act of state-sponsored terrorism carried out by the Libyan Intelligence service and held a trial in 2001, Swire remained skeptical, telling anyone who would listen about the holes in the prosecution’s case. Even today, there are numerous alternate theories around who was responsible and what their motives were.

Let’s break down the true story behind Lockerbie: A Search For Truth and examine the story’s many alternate theories.

What happened in the Lockerbie bombing?

Flight 103, a Boeing 747, was scheduled to fly from Frankfurt to Detroit with stopovers in London and New York. Shortly after 7pm while the plane was in flight over Scotland, it was destroyed. There were no survivors. A total of 270 people died, including the flight’s passengers, crew, and 11 townspeople.
 

How did the investigation proceed?

Scottish police and the FBI undertook a joint three-year investigation. In November 1991, they issued arrest warrants for two Libyan nationals, including Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was tried by the Scottish court at Camp Zeist, a former US air force base, in the Netherlands. They were also accused of placing the suitcase containing the bomb into the luggage system in the Maltese town Luqa for a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, and then on to London.

Both men protested their innocence. Then-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi refused to extradite al-Megrahi and fellow suspect Lamin Khalifa Fhimah to the authorities in Washington or Edinburgh, resulting in years of sanctions. Eventually, Nelson Mandela and the United Nations brokered a deal, leading to the Camp Zeist trial.

The main piece of evidence prosecutors used was a scrap of cloth found near the countryside 30 miles from Lockerbie after the crash. Within a burnt shirt neckband was a fragment of circuit board, which the CIA and FBI said matched a component of an MST-13 bomb timer. A similar timer had been seized in Togo and traced to a Swiss company called MEBO. The company revealed to investigators that it had sold MST-13 timers to Libya and one of the company’s owners, Edwin Bollier, admitted he knew al-Megrahi, whom he stated had an office next to his in Zurich.

Meanwhile, investigators traced the scrap of clothing back to a small shop in Malta. The shop owner, Tony Gauci, told investigators he recalled selling a seemingly random selection of clothes to a man in the weeks leading up to the bombing. When shown a photo of al-Megrahi, Gauci said it looked like the man who’d been in his shop. Al-Megrahi denied having been on Malta that day, though immigration records showed al-Megrahi had arrived on the island from Libya on Dec. 20, 1988, the day before the bombing, using a fake passport.

Allegedly, al-Megrahi traveled back to Libya on the 21^st with fellow intelligence operative Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud​, who was later accused of making the bomb used on Flight 103. (Mas’ud was charged by the U.S. in 2020 for the bombing and arrested in December 2022. He pled not guilty in February 2023 and a trial has been set for May 2025 in Washington.) Al-Megrahi declined to take the stand during his trial, so the public never heard his explanation why he was  allegedly in Malta or his reason for using a fake ID.

In 2001, al-Megrahi was found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. He was released by the Scottish government in 2009 on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Al-Megrahi died in 2012 and was the only person convicted in connection with the attack. Al-Megrahi’s co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty and acquitted.

Prior to his death, Megrahi regularly maintained his innocence; he unsuccessfully appealed his 2001 conviction. Ultimately, al-Megrahi dropped his appeal two days before his release.

On Aug. 29, 2011, the Wall Street Journal published a story about a private letter written by Megrahi at the intelligence headquarters in Tripoli, Libya. Addressed to the country’s intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the letter stated: “I am an innocent man.”

Gaddafi, who was assassinated by rebel forces in 2011, never accepted personal blame for the attack, but in 2003 his government took responsibility “for the actions of its officials” and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the bombing victims’ families.

Who is Jim Swire?

Following the death of his daughter Flora on Flight 103, Swire dedicated his life to uncovering the truth behind who perpetrated the Lockerbie bombing and what their motive(s) were. (Today, Swire is in his 80s and runs the website lockerbietruth.com with Peter Biddulph, co-author of Lockerbie: A Search for Truth.)  A spokesman for the U.K. Families Flight 103, a group of family members of the deceased, Swire also advocated for the retrial and release of al-Megrahi (since deceased), whom he believed had been unfairly accused of the bombing.

In a controversial demonstration of lax airport security, in 1990 Swire carried a fake bomb onto a British Airways flight from London to New York, and then to Boston.  

As he wrote in his book, Swire believes the bomb timer fragment was planted. “In 2012 came the startling news that independent scientific tests conducted by two British scientists has proved that the timer fragment did not come from a timer board made by Swiss manufacturers… This meant conclusively that the fragment could not have come from a timer board supplied to Libya,” Swire writes in a book summary on his website.

Swire has also repeatedly said to reporters that he believes Iran was primarily responsible for the Lockerbie attack; the U.S. did not pursue this theory because officials wanted “to blame somebody, anybody, rather than Iran.”

What are some other theories and revelations around the Lockerbie bombing?

According to a 1991 fact sheet released by the US State Department, officials initially believed the attack had been a joint plan between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). The fact sheet described “reliable intelligence” indicating these groups were planning to attack a U.S. target in retaliation for an incident where the American warship USS Vincennes accidently shot down an Iranian Airbus in July 1988, just five months before Lockerbie.

Likewise, the bomb that exploded on Flight 103 bore a resemblance to one, also in a Toshiba radio, found in the car of a Palestinian militant during a raid in Frankfurt less than two months earlier. The PFLP-GC also reportedly was in possession of flight schedules.

Investigators didn’t pursue this theory, as the State Department said the Toshiba radios were different in appearance and used different bomb technology than the one on Flight 103. However, in 2014, an Iranian defector to Germany claimed the attack had been ordered by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomheini “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus” that was shot down by the U.S.

In 2013, Swire told the Telegraph he believed that pursuing the Iran theory would have caused diplomatic problems for America at a time when the government was negotiating hostage releases in Lebanon.

Experts have also theorized that Syria may have been involved, as Libya, Iran, and Palestinian extremists all had ties to Syria at the time. The State Department’s fact sheet stated that Syria was the primary political sponsor of PFLP-GC and “was at least broadly aware” of the group’s operations.

“We cannot rule out a broader conspiracy between Libya and other governments or terrorist organizations,” the fact sheet stated. “Despite these links, we lack information indicating direct collaboration.”

In addition to exploring the Iran-Palestinian theory, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth digs into the fact that there had been unheeded warnings about the coming attack. In the weeks prior to the explosion, the U.S. embassy in Finland received a call with a warning of a “plot against a Pan American flight to the U.S. sometime in the next two weeks.” This was passed to the US Federal Aviation Administration but was dismissed as a hoax.

Likewise, two days before the flight, the U.K. Department of Transport sent Pan Am a letter warning that a bomb had been placed in a cassette player. The warning was based on information sent out by the German intelligence services. Pan Am later stated that due to the Christmas rush, the letter was not received until Jan. 17.

Finally, during his first appeal in 2002, Megrahi’s defense pointed to evidence suggesting that the Samsonite suitcase did not originate from Malta, including reports of a security breach at Heathrow 18 hours prior to the attack. The appeal panel rejected the argument as grounds for a retrial.

Where is the status of the Lockerbie case today?

After more than 35 years, al-Megrahi remains the only person convicted of the bombing, while alleged co-conspirator Mas’ud’s trial date is currently set for May 12, 2025.

Still, numerous questions and theories continue to swirl around every aspect of the Lockerbie bombing. Lockerbie: A Search For Truth doesn’t directly answer these questions as it does provide a step-by-step accounting of Swire’s investigation and introduce a new generation of audiences to a grim piece of geopolitical history.