It’s clear who was to blame for the Lockerbie terrorist bombing: Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi paid over a billion dollars to relatives of the 270 victims of the attack after accepting responsibility. But viewers of Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, might feel that the USA and UK were somehow involved. Here’s a clue as to why that might be the case: it’s co-directed by Jim Loach, son of Ken, who seems not so much a chip off the old block as a chip off the old Trot block.
Swire’s story resembles what a Sinn Féin critic like me calls the forgiveness fallacy
Lockerbie’s hero is Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the 1988 bombing, and later began to reach out to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Libyan bomber. Swire came to the conclusion that the former Libyan agent was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Lord Fraser, the former lord advocate, said Swire’s campaign to prove al-Megrahi innocent was comparable to Stockholm syndrome where captives grow to admire their captors.
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