Jim Swire

On 20 December 1988, Swire's 23-year-old daughter Flora, who wanted to fly to the United States to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend, had little difficulty in booking a seat on the next day's half-empty transatlantic Pan Am Flight 103.

Flora died when it exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing at least 270 people, including 11 on the ground.

[1] On 18 May 1990, Swire took a fake bomb on board a British Airways flight from London's Heathrow airport to New York's JFK[4] and then on a flight from New York JFK to Boston to show that airline security had not improved; his fake bomb consisted of a radio cassette player and the confectionery marzipan, which was used as a substitute for Semtex.

Some American family members asked Swire to keep the news of the stunt quiet; it became public six weeks later.

In 1994, Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh University proposed that the two Libyans could be prosecuted under Scots law but in a neutral country.

Swire was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme a few hours before the SCCRC announced its decision.

On 20 August 2009, owing to the cancer, Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill.