Jim Swire - UK Families Flight 103

UK Families Flight 103

The 270 Pan Am 103 victims came from 21 countries.

In February 1989, the U.S. group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 was formed to represent the interests of the families of the 189 American victims.

The same year, the British relatives founded their own campaigning group, UK Families Flight 103 (UKFF103), to press for a public inquiry into the crash, and to seek truth and justice for all of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103.

In the British media, in radio and TV interviews, and in letters to newspapers, the spokesman for UKFF103 would, more often than not, be Swire, though the position of spokesman was never defined in the organisation.

On 18 May 1990, Swire took a fake bomb on board a British Airways from London Heathrow to New York JFK 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 for a while; it became public six weeks after Swire did it. Susan and Daniel Cohen, parents of Pan Am Flight 103 victim Theodora Cohen approved of the plan, while some other family members of American victims did not.

Susan Cohen said that in the beginning she admired Swire "a great deal." The Cohens said that both they and Swire felt suspicious about the development in the mainstream account that Libya was solely responsible for the bombing; unlike the Cohens, Swire believed that Libya had no responsibility at all. Daniel Cohen said that he and his wife did not approve of Swire travelling to Tripoli, Libya and placing a photograph of Flora next to the photograph of Hanna, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's adopted daughter, who died in a 1986 U.S. bombing. The Cohens said that they thought that Swire "was being foolish and worse" since the Cohens believed that his actions were forming Libyan propaganda and that al-Gaddafi was using Swire to benefit himself. As Swire made more trips to Libya Susan Cohen said that he began to remind her of Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai since the character was, in Susan Cohen's words, "a brave and decent man whose obsession led him to unwittingly serve the enemy cause."

The Cohens said in their book that Swire had praised a book project, which became Trail of the Octopus. When the Cohens discovered that Lester Coleman was the author, they told Swire to have a suspicion about the project; they said that Swire said that he wanted to "keep an open mind" about the book project.