Victim’s Father Proves Plane Security Still Lax

A Briton whose daughter was killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Scotland said he breached security at London’s Heathrow Airport and carried a dummy replica of the Pan Am bomb undetected on a flight to New York.

Jim Swire said Sunday he smuggled a radio cassette player filled with marzipan, an almond paste resembling the plastic explosive Semtex, on a London-to-New York flight three weeks ago to demonstrate that security remains too lax to thwart terrorist acts. It was not disclosed when Swire’s flight took place, or on which airline.

Swire’s daughter, Flora, 20, a medical student, was killed when the Pan American Airways Boeing 747 headed from London to New York exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December, 1988, killing all 259 on board and 11 people on the ground.

Investigators believe suspects hid a bomb made of Semtex in a cassette recorder on board the aircraft.

The British media reported Sunday that Swire, a former explosives officer with the Royal Engineers, made the fake bomb--which contained a dummy detonator, timer, batteries and pressure switch--to look like the Lockerbie device.

The replica contained about three-quarters of a pound of marzipan, which the Sunday Express said has a similar appearance and odor to Semtex, the plastic explosive made in Czechoslovakia.

At a news conference Sunday, Swire displayed the cassette player and said it was so heavy that the security staff at Heathrow should have been suspicious.