The naming of two new suspects dragging the downing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie back into the news headlines, together with the suggestion that a Lockerbie-type bomb may have brought down the Russian passenger jetliner over Sinai, brings back bad memories of that terribly tragic night in Scotland twenty-seven years ago.

In an incredible and almost fatal case of wrong time, wrong place, my brother, some two hundred and fifty miles from home, was coming up to driving through Lockerbie when the bomb-shattered plane hit the ground. In the dark, he was aware of nothing until a huge explosion erupted ahead of him. His first instinct was that a petrol tanker had exploded and, indeed, it was probably escaping fuel that sent a fireball racing down the road towards the van he was driving. Rescue workers who found him wandering around dazed and in a severe state of shock were unsure who he was and even wondered at first if he was a plane survivor.

Fortunately, he must have reacted fast enough at the sight of the fireball to avoid serious physical injury, though sustaining burns to his face and scalp. Pictures of the fire-gutted van in subsequent TV and Press reports were a grim illustration of how close my brother came to becoming another victim of this appalling atrocity.