Lockerbie A Search for Truth: Real story of grieving dad Dr Jim Swire played by Colin Firth
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Dr Jim Swire is the real-life inspiration behind Colin Firth's character in a new five-part Sky series about the Lockerbie plane crash. A total of 270 people were killed in the UK's worst-ever terrorist attack, made up of passengers and crew on the London Heathrow flight bound for New York and residents on the ground in the small Scottish town.
Flora Swire, 23, was one of the victims onboard the ill-fated flight attacked by terrorists, leaving her father, Jim, with a lifelong quest to achieve justice for his lost daughter. Flora had been heading to the Big Apple to visit her boyfriend and her parents believe she was planning to tell them she had gained a place at Cambridge University to study medicine on Christmas Day.
Sadly, the talented student was killed just minutes into her flight on December 21, 1988, when the plane exploded 31,000ft over Lockerbie. Flora never got the chance to follow Jim into a career in medicine. Instead, the GP was left torn apart by grief.
Married to wife Jane with two other children, Jim told the Mirror in 2021 that after the crash, he had formally identified his daughter's body in a mass morgue in an ice rink in Lockerbie. Flora was so badly injured he was only able to identify his daughter by her feet, which had a dark mole on her left big toe.
Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the terrorist attack in 2001 and released on compassionate grounds in 2009, protesting his innocence up until his death from prostate cancer in 2012. In December 2020, the US Attorney General announced new charges against Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, a former Libyan intelligence operative, for his role in the bombing, with a trial set to take place in Washington in May.
