Lockerbie: A Search for Truth – Episode 5 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Episode 5

Episode 5 of Lockerbie: A Search for Truth begins on August 2009, 20 years and 8 months since the bombing. Over at the prison, al-Megrahi is finally allowed to leave the prison. He feels the wind for the first time on his fingers and with only a few months to live, al-Megrahi is deported back to Libya to see his family.

Jim Swire sees this and shows up to see the defence team who worked on getting Megrahi out. They confirm too that he was released on compassionate leave grounds, but it also meant they had to drop the appeal process for this to happen. The result of this is that he’s going to die as the Lockerbie bomber.

Megrahi left nothing for Jim but for an address and number, but our protagonist is convinced that he had his hand forced into making this decision. However, there’s a bigger twist here as it would appear that Megrahi may actually live for another 10 years beyond the 3 months given. For the public, Jim calls out al-Megrahi as another victim from the flight, which shocks Jane and many others watching the news. This has massive implications for the family too, as Jane is livid and unsure how to handle all of this.

We then jump to July 2010 and Murray shows up to see Jim. He brings up Wikileaks and how there’s a document buried on there about Megrahi. Apparently, the Libyans made a direct threat to the UK. In exchange for Megrahi’s release, it would appear that oil was part of this deal and Libya pressured the UK into doing this, meaning Megrahi was a political pawn.

February 2011 and Libya erupts into chaos. Jim is desperate for the truth and tries ringing al-Megrahi to find out what’s going on. In the middle of the night, Jim leaves to get some air. Jane is pretty shocked and heads out to try and find her husband. His entire conviction has been rattled by the drama in Libya, and he admits he’s not sure what he believes anymore. Jane implores her husband to finish this, with the final stop being to find Megrahi and put this behind them.

In Libya, things are very different. The place is basically a warzone, under militia control and incredibly hostile; a far-cry from what we saw when we saw all of this earlier in the series. Jim shows up at Megrahi’s place and he’s eventually allowed in after being threatened at gunpoint. He questions Megrahi’s motives, who apologizes but explains that he was only allowed to return home under this one condition. And of course, family is everything. This is important to note because for Jim, this is something that he’s neglected for decades.

Megrahi encourages him to keep fighting though, and hands over all the documents that he has gathered, with everything they’ve gathered surrounding the case. The biggest point is the timer fragment, which appears to have zero connection to this and was just used to frame Megrahi.

On the way back from Libya, Jane is there to greet him at the airport. The pair warmly embrace and Jim takes all of this up to see Murray. He’s convinced that this evidence was planted to frame Megrahi, and could have been done at any point during the investigation, whether during the crash or inside the evidence recovery.

However, given how Guddafi was desperate to get Megrahi back home, Murray believes that there could be a big ol’ conspiracy here, with numerous individuals involved. Murray is done but Jim meanwhile, is determined to fight on, believing their new evidence is going to win the public over. However, the world has moved on and now, and the younger generation don’t even remember the Lockerbie disaster. This is all done really cleverly through a woman working at the diner who questions just what Lockerbie was.

Fast forward to May 2012 and Jim continues to try and reach out to publishers and editors to get his evidence published. However, Megrahi passes away in the process of all this. Jim sits with Jane and brings up the news about his death. Jane believes that they’re never going to truly know what happened but since she’s embraced this uncertainty and got closure for herself, he now needs to do the same thing – for the sake of himself and his family.

How does Lockerbie end?

Its taken a long time but finally, Jim starts to let Flora go. He takes everything down off the wall, with Flora’s photo the final piece to go. It’s symbolic of Jim’s continued headspace and desire to try and get justice for Flora, but after all of this, his search for the truth has only brought more questions than answers.

Jim Swire decides to do what’s right and thankfully, he has a great wife in Jane who has somehow stood by his side all these difficult years. Now, at this time, Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted of the bombing from that flight.

What is missed out of the show?

During Megrahi’s second appeal to the British government, he signed a public interest immunity certificate to prevent secret intelligence documents allegedly implicating Iran and the PFLP-GC. In 2020, they signed a second immunity certificate and these documents are classified to this day bringing up big question marks over exactly who was responsible for the bombing.

Contradictory documents, declassified by the Foreign and Commonwealth office, reveal that several Libyan intelligence officials have seemingly admitted involvement in this, including Gaddafi’s right hand man, Moussa Koussa.

In 2022, the US government extradited Libyan national Abu Agila Mas’ud whom they claim built the bomb used on Flight 103, having conspired with Megrahi and Fhimah to get onboard. His trial is set for 12th May 2025 but for now, Jim Swire and the others believe Megrahi is innocent but no independent trial has ever taken place, throwing big question marks on this one.

The Episode Review

So Lockerbie: A Search for truth comes to a close with a thought provoking final episode, one that sees Jim Swire realize that this entire case is way too big to crack, even for him. Whatever the truth is, it’s clear that there are irregularities over numerous parts of this investigation, including the crash site investigators who just showed up ahead of everyone, and the fact the officials seemed to know about the bombing too.

Through all of this, there are big question marks surrounding whether al-Megrahi was actually innocent and set up as a fall guy, or if he may have been behind the bombings and conspiring with others this whole time.

As for the series itself, Colin Firth does a great job bringing Jim Swire to life as this determined, grieving father and the whole show has done well to depict the toils and tribulations he’s gone through, along with the strain on his family, while pursuing this investigation and search for the truth.

In the end, the show examines when this obsession becomes damaging to those around you. Whether we’ll ever truly find out what happened to those victims is unclear, but for now, Lockerbie pays homage to the victims with a solid and informative drama.