Lockerbie and the forgiveness fallacy

It’s clear who was to blame for the Lockerbie terrorist bombing: Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi paid over a billion dollars to relatives of the 270 victims of the attack after accepting responsibility. But viewers of Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, might feel that the USA and UK were somehow involved. Here’s a clue as to why that might be the case: it’s co-directed by Jim Loach, son of Ken, who seems not so much a chip off the old block as a chip off the old Trot block.

Lockerbie’s hero is Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the 1988 bombing, and later began to reach out to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Libyan bomber. Swire came to the conclusion that the former Libyan agent was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Lord Fraser, the former lord advocate, said Swire’s campaign to prove al-Megrahi innocent was comparable to Stockholm syndrome where captives grow to admire their captors.