Lockerbie families’ anger at Colin Firth drama about bombing

For years he has argued that the Lockerbie bomber is innocent.
Jim Swire believes Iran — and not Libya — downed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Scotland, killing 270 people including his daughter Flora.
Now Colin Firth is to play the bereaved father in a major new TV drama, called Lockerbie and said to be inspired by the ITV based-on-fact series Mr Bates vs the Post Office. But the mini-series, to be shown on Sky, has once again pitted Swire against the families of other victims — who accept the official story that Libyan spies planted a bomb on the plane.
Only one man — the intelligence operative Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from Tripoli — has ever been convicted in connection with what amounts to the biggest homicide in modern Scottish history. Many of the victims on the Boeing 747 — which was flying from London to New York — were from the United States.
Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, whose father Frank Ciulla, died in the disaster, told The Mail on Sunday newspaper that complaints had been made about the upcoming show.
“We have raised our concerns with the producers,” she said. “We feel they are amplifying and highlighting a false narrative about the bombing, a narrative that the great majority of us who lost loved ones do not align with and have fought very hard against.”
Firth — who starred in the BBC’s 1990s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and blockbuster movies The King’s Speech and Mamma Mia! — is understood to have sought reassurances about the plot. A production insider told the newspaper: “Colin was worried as he felt the drama had the potential to impact heavily on the sympathies of viewers in the same way that the Alan Bates drama had on the postmasters controversy. He wanted to be sure it was the right thing to be involved with because this is real life — it’s not just a story.”
Firth has met with Swire — whose 2021 book on Lockerbie formed the basis for the series — and other campaigners who believe al-Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew on board and another 11 people on the ground. Al-Megrahi was jailed for life in 2001 after a special trial conducted by Scottish judges in the Netherlands. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after he developed cancer and died three years later in Libya.
Another Libyan is expected to face trial in the United States next year over the bombing.