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One December day in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, 38 minutes after takeoff from London. All 259 people on board the New York-bound flight died. A Trinidadian man was one. This is his story. Long before 9/11, Trinidad and Tobago knew about terror, through the shame of the 1990 attempted coup, the destruction of property and the deaths of at least 24 for whom there was never any justice or retribution. But you may be surprised to know that long before the evil deeds of al Qaeda and the Jamaat al Muslimeen, terrorists had killed one of our citizens. It was an attack which, 30 years later, is still the subject of criminal investigation by people intent on pursuing justice for this Trinidadian and 269 others murdered when a passenger plane exploded above Scotland and fell to the village below. Names have potency so let’s speak his. Anthony Selwyn Swan - Trinidad born, US resident, 29-years-old. Sitting in seat 44K, on the right side, a window seat, at the rear of the double decker Boeing 747 – Pan American Flight 103, as it prepared to head out over the Atlantic. Swan had boarded with the others at London’s Heathrow Airport, destination New York. Among the passengers – 35 America students, twelve children, a baby, a 79-year-old woman, 21 countries represented. The flight took off at 6.25p.m. December 21, 1988. At that point, they had 38 minutes to live. The aircraft reached cruising altitude six miles above the town of Lockerbie, Scotland when the bomb exploded in the cargo compartment at the front of the plane. The nose and cockpit peeled away. Passengers would have been stunned by the cold, roar and darkness, the decompression knocking them unconscious as the beheaded plane began to fall, the engines still at full throttle. A minute after the bombing, a fuel filled wing, part of the passenger compartment attached, came down in a residential area, killing eleven on the ground, setting fire to the houses. Wreckage fell in and around the town, the cockpit in a sheep pasture. Anthony Swan was one of the people who fell on the town of Lockerbie.  You can read his story at the link in our bio or stories.

January 07, 2022