LOCKERBIE 30 YEARS OF GRIEF
STILL the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil, 270 passengers, crew and residents of a small Scottish town died when a bomb in a radio/cassette player packed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded in the cargo hold of Pan Am flight 103 nearly 30 years ago.
To mark the anniversary, Channel 5 documentary Lockerbie: The Unheard Voices, tells the story of 12 victims and survivors – and reveals two warnings were ignored.
Witness David Murdoch, then nine and a future Olympic curling champion, was with his mother Marion and his sister Nancy as they drove home from a lesson at Lockerbie ice rink on December 21, 1988.
“The noise was getting louder and louder,” said David, “and I was almost screaming at Mum to speed up the car. It was just so, so loud.
“We heard the impact [in Sherwood Crescent] and it was almost like the car was jumping off the road. I had actually turned around at one point and could see a mushroomtype cloud like Hiroshima, and that was just billowing up into the sky.
“I think immediately we thought a petrol station had gone up, because of the explosion.”
The first to arrive described it as a “battlefield – a scene from hell”.
The film charts an intense twoday period beginning at 9am on December 21. Relatives and some of those who missed the flight from Frankfurt via London to New York, tell their story for the first time.
At JFK Airport in New York, Jeannine Boulanger heard the horrific news that her daughter Nicole had been on the plane. She collapsed on the concourse floor, screaming, “My baby! My baby!” Her anguished reaction was filmed by news crews and went around the world.
She tells Channel 5: “That was when our nightmare began.”
But could the horror have been avoided if warnings were heeded?
A fortnight before the explosion, a caller rang the US Embassy in Finland to say there was a “plot against a Pan American flight to the US sometime in the next two weeks”.
This was passed to the US Federal Aviation Administration but was “ultimately dismissed as a hoax”.
A second, less widely known warning, came two days before the ill-fated flight. The UK Department of Transport “sent out a letter” warning a “bomb had been placed in a cassette player”, according to the documentary. “The warning was based on detailed information sent out by the German intelligence services.”
This was never heeded.
It is not known how the brown Samsonite case made its way into cargo hold, but “security checks” failed to pick up anything.
It contained the Toshiba radio/ cassette tape player, in which 450g of Semtex and a timer was hidden.
Lockerbie is also the story of those who changed plans and didn’t make the flight.
Sex Pistol John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, could have been on Flight 103, if it weren’t for his wife’s packing. “She just couldn’t get the luggage together in time,” he said, “so we cancelled the flight.”
Sex And The City actress Kim Cattrall also had a brush with fate.
“I decided to take another flight,” she revealed, “because I had neglected to go to Harrods and buy a teapot for my mother.”
The Four Tops also missed the Pam Am service. A producer’s last-minute change in the recording time for Top Of The Pops at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, meant they avoided the tragedy, too.
American Jaswant Basuta, in the UK for a family wedding, had made it to Heathrow on time but relatives seeing him off took him to the airport bar for a drink.
“My brother told me,” said Basuta, ‘you must have a beer with me’, so I had a beer. Three of them.”
Before he knew it the departure board was flashing “gate closing”. He missed it by seconds.
But Basuta became the first suspect in the case when police discovered his luggage had made it on to the flight. “I had to go to Heathrow Police station and explain,” he said.
But the ultimate suspect was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Libyan Airlines’ security chief, who was convicted in 2001 of the bombing.
He died in May 2012, maintaining his innocence. His family are still trying to appeal his conviction.
Last week, a police probe found no evidence of criminality in relation to the handling of the investigation and prosecution in the case.
The film states: “For many of the families of the 270 victims there are still many unanswered questions.”
Lockerbie: The Unheard Voices, Channel 5, Dec 4, 9pm.