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.

Jim Swire's fake bomb