Lockerbie - 36 years on

Wednesday, 21st December 1988. 7.03pm. Flight PanAm 103 was en-route from London to New York, when it disappeared off air traffic control radar, substituted by several fragments, which fell to the ground. One piece slammed into the town of Lockerbie. All on board the plane were killed, alongside eleven townspeople from Lockerbie when houses were destroyed by falling debris and fire. The plane had been brought down by a bomb, planted by terrorists allegedly linked to the then Libyan government of Col Ghadaffi. The full chain of command for the attack has never been fully clarified, in public at any rate, and there are questionmarks as to why security services didn't manage to foil the plot. One man was put on trial, convicted and sentenced. In 2009, he was released on compassionate grounds and repatriated to Libya.

All that is immaterial to the relatives and friends of those killed. They are remembered in a memorial on Sherwood Crescent in Lockerbie, which was flattened by the downed plane. We remember them all. 

Image courtesy BBC

July 1981. On my way north with family for the annual holiday. As we headed north up the A74, an all enveloping horror made me lie down on the back seat. I cannot explain what it was about, or why. But after I had given in to my emotion, I looked up again and asked where we were. "Lockerbie", came the answer, and I saw the sign for the A709 turn-off to Lockerbie and Lochmaben flash by.


The same sign that can be seen in the footage from December 1988. The location where parts of the plane came down. Don't ask me to explain the coincidence. I can't.

In 1988, I was a student in Holland, and given to watch rubbish on the television. That evening, the Lockerbie images flashed by - and that road sign. A74 Glasgow, the North - A709 Lockerbie, Lochmaben.

May the innocent victims of Lockerbie, from the plane, or on the ground, all rest in peace.

This post is scheduled for publication at 7.03pm on Saturday, 21st December 2024.

Syria

So, Syria's dictator has run away from his country, after he had been abandoned by his backers Russia and Iran. 

I recall Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, back in 2003, being ousted following America's "shock and awe" operation to remove him, accusing him of being in possession of weapons of mass-destruction. Saddam appears to have gotten rid of those, but he became a scapegoat for 9/11. He was unceremoniously hanged in December 2006, after (I think) 45 years in power, being feted by the high and mighty of this world. Saddam had been useful to the USA as a counterweight against the Islamic Republic of Iran; the two countries fought an eight-year war. Saddam deployed chemical weapons against his own population, the Kurds. Halabja was a killing ground against up to 5000 people. But when the Yanks booted him out, Saddam's WMD were nowhere to be found. Nobody mourned his dreadful death, but the justification for the invasion was void.

I recall the equally maverick, but equally deadly dictator Muammar Ghadaffi, Lybia's leader with the assumed rank of Colonel. His regime has been accused of masterminding the downing of PamAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. We commemorate the 36th anniversary of that atrocity on 21st December. But Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been accused of involvement with the attack was later released on compassionate grounds. Kenny Macaskill, the Scottish justice secretary in 2009, conveniently overlooking that Al-Megrahi had been convicted of crimes that showed no compassion at all. 

Syria's Bashar al-Assad also deployed chemical weapons against his own people, in his own capital, 11 years ago. The uprising from 2011 caused a civil war that appears to have been concluded with his fall. A ghastly dictator, who had no compunction in killing Syrian civilians, prompting a mass exodus. Their number is thought to be as much as 11 million. Some have ended up here in Stornoway, I know of a barber shop which was set up by a Syrian refugee. 

Will these refugees come back? Once the elation of Assad's craven flight to his paymasters in Moscow has subsided, they may be well advised to await developments, and see whether Syria is spared the bloody aftermath that followed the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and of Muammar Ghadaffi in Libya.

NaBloPoMo 2024

Well, that fizzled out after day 11. Not that I have that much to report on these days, but could have done better. I'll just post a picture from the Christmas illuminations that adorn Stornoway for the festive period. The switch-on event was last Tuesday, 26th November, but was only able to get out take a picture during the hours of darkness the next evening.