Latest news with #Lockerbie
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Celebration of Lockerbie bomber's release was 'grotesque', says Sturgeon
The Lockerbie bomber's arrival in Libya to a Saltire-waving crowd was 'grotesque' following the decision to release him from a Scottish jail, according to Nicola Sturgeon. The former First Minister opened up on her personal concerns about the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and said the Cabinet was not consulted. She heavily criticised the way the decision was made by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill without consultation from other ministers. He was freed from Greenock prison eight years into a life sentence in 2009 on compassionate grounds because of his terminal prostate cancer, and lived in Libya until his death in 2012. Ms Sturgeon said the decision 'sent shockwaves' across Scotland, the UK and much of the world and that 'had the political dynamic in Scotland been different, I have no doubt it would have brought us down'. She said: 'Had I been asked to take a decision based on my personal views, I would have decided against Megrahi's release or transfer.' While Mr MacAskill was responsible for the decision, Ms Sturgeon said it was 'inconceivable' to her that the Cabinet would not be consulted given the magnitude of what was being decided. She said Mr MacAskill's decision to visit Megrahi in jail 'astounded me' and said she first became aware of an imminent decision through a BBC news story. She said she had called Alex Salmond about the story and he implied he was 'surprised' and not in the loop because Mr MacAskill was the decision-maker - but she said she 'didn't believe him'. On Mr MacAskill's statement to parliament confirming the decision, Ms Sturgeon said: 'Kenny's intonation in making the statement made it sound like he was reading a bedtime story.' Ms Sturgeon then goes on to recount the scenes as Megrahi touched down in Tripoli, where he appeared at the door of the plane with his arm held aloft by one of Gadaffi's sons. She described how Megrahi was treated 'like a conquering war hero returning from battle', as the convicted mass murderer was greeted by a large crowd, many waving saltires as they expressed their gratutude for the decision made in Scotland. She added: 'It was grotesque.' She went on to state she could have resigned given her misgivings 'and did consider it' but opted to accept collective responsibility and rowed in behind Mr MacAskill. However, Mr MacAskill has repeatedly rubihsed the autobiography since details from it emerged, stating Ms turgeon 'is seeking to rewrite history and distorting the truth'. In 2009 Ms Sturgeon commented on the release of Megrahi, stating Mr MacAskill had 'made a brave and difficult decision'. Her comments were made after a poll showed 69 per cent of Scots believed the country's reputation was diminished in the eyes of the world because of the decision to release the bomber.
Scotsman
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Small Acts of Love: the 'ambitious' new show reopening the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow
This autumn, the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow will reopen after a seven-year refurbishment programme with a production of Ricky Ross and Frances Poet's Lockerbie bombing drama Small Acts of Love. Joyce McMillan reports Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... First preview Tuesday 9 September, gala opening Friday 12th; and with a mighty swirl of Gorbals glamour, Glasgow's beloved Citizens' Theatre will be open again for business, after a £40 million rebuilding programme that was originally billed to take three years, but that - thanks to lockdown, among many other delays - has taken more than seven years, since May 2018. The newly refurbished Citizens' Theatre | Mark Liddell The result, though, is simply breathtaking. The Citizens' much-loved Victorian auditorium, first opened in 1878, remains as it always was, glowing in red plush and superb gold plasterwork, and with its dizzyingly steep balcony tier now gorgeously refurbished for the 21st century. All around it, though - and designed to reveal and celebrate the very bones of the original Citizens' building - is a fabulous new theatre building for Glasgow, still featuring some of the old backstage spaces, but also offering a soaring new foyer and cafe area opening straight onto Gorbals Street. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There are also - beyond the foyer - a range of impressive new facilities, from a brand new studio theatre and community company space to new or beautifully refurbished dressing rooms, rehearsal spaces, workshops and offices, and a magical glass-walled corridor that runs through the building, offering the public a view of everything from the backstage scene dock to the ancient machinery still in place under the stage. Dominic Hill | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan 'It's a wonderful moment,' says the Citizens' artistic director Dominic Hill, reflecting on the company's final rush to reopen, in just six weeks time. 'It feels big, and it feels national in its significance. The new building is just so exciting and inspiring; and what I love is the way it somehow holds the whole history of the Citizens', while also enabling us to look forward. In the time the theatre has been closed, a whole new community has grown up around it - a new Gorbals, with new people moving in; and we really want to be a vital part of that life of the community, a big building full of activity people can join in with, with a cafe that's open all day, and a real sense of open access for everyone. 'An in terms of the work on stage - well, you can see from our opening season that we want to present both classics and new work, perhaps more new work than in the past. We want to be telling stories about and from Scotland as it is today, as well as reinterpreting classics for our time; and that's why it just felt so right to reopen with a brand new show, a big, ambitious show that links Scotland to some of the key issues of our time.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ricky Ross | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan The show in question is Small Acts of Love, a new piece of music theatre about the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, co-written by Glasgow-based playwright Frances Poet and Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue, who is delighted to be involved in the reopening of the theatre. 'I came to Glasgow as a student in the early 1980's,' says Ross, 'and I went to see everything at the Citizens'. And it just changed me, as it changed many people in my generation - the idea that Glasgow could have this fabulous theatre that was challenging and exciting audiences all over Europe - it was just transformative. 'So I've always loved the place; and when Dominic suggested this project back in 2020, and put me in touch with Frances Poet who had already been working on the Lockerbie story, it just seemed absolutely right. The story of what happened in Lockerbie after the bombing is just so much a story about community; and that's something I think theatre, particularly music theatre, can just capture brilliantly. At first, back in lockdown, it was just Frances doing the research and writing the script, and me writing the songs, both music and lyrics. Frances Poet 'But as the lyrics began to emerge, I would share them with Frances, and she would begin to work them into the text; and I really hope we've created something that gets to the heart of that experience, of how a community - and the American families they came to know so well - can survive such a thing, and begin to live on.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad After Small Acts Of Love, the Citizens' autumn main stage season will also included a full-scale production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie - co-produced with the Lyceum and Dundee Rep - and a first chance for Glasgow to see local playwright Douglas Maxwell's award-winning 2024 play So Young. And at Christmas, the theatre will present both Barrowland Ballet's beautiful show The Gift, and - on the main stage - a brand new version of Beauty And The Beast by Lewis Hetherington, co-directed by Dominic Hill with brilliant young director Joanna Bowman. 'And after Christmas,' adds Dominic Hill, 'we're really looking forward to shows like Lynn Nottage's terrific American rust-belt play Sweat, Stewart Laing's take on Saint Joan, and a stage adaptation of Denise Mina's brilliant Glasgow novel The Long Drop, about the Peter Manuel trial. 'One show I'm particularly pleased about, though, is the first play in our studio, the Citizens' young company show Close. On one hand it tells the story of the Close Theatre, the Citizens' little theatre club and studio that brought a whole new strand of radical work to Glasgow audiences in the 1960s and 70s. Yet on the other, it also looks forward, and reflects on how that history can help shape our work today, and into the future. And I think in that sense, our young company is really expressing everything we want to say about this theatre, as we reopen; how much we value the Citizens' amazing past, and how excited we are that we can now take that inspiration forward, into the future.'
Scottish Sun
05-07-2025
- Scottish Sun
Floor was slick with blood, screams echoed in tunnel, I felt every human emotion, says 7/7 survivor on 20th anniversary
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) ON the morning of July 7, 2005, journalist Peter Zimonjic and his wife Donna set off from their West London flat to catch a train into the city. It was a seemingly ordinary day, much like any other – but it would turn out to change Peter's life for ever. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 8 Peter Zimonjic says the 7/7 bombings have taught him to feel in his bones how our time on Earth is fleeting Credit: Photograph by Blair Gable 8 Commuter Alexander Chadwick took this picture of passengers being evacuated from the bombed Piccadilly Line train in a tunnel near Kings Cross station Credit: AP:Associated Press 8 A shot from a passenger's video on board a train next to the one targeted by bombers at Edgware Road Credit: Ferrari Press Agency For he was about to witness the worst terror incident since the 1988 Lockerbie disaster – and the first suicide bombings that the UK had ever seen. That morning, just before 9am, three al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists detonated devices on Tube trains in central London. An hour later, a fourth device was set off on a No30 bus near Euston station. The 7/7 bombings killed 52 people and injured over 770. Peter and Donna had caught a train at their local station in Hanwell, near Ealing. But when they had to change trains, Donna chose to take a different route from Peter's, as she was heavily pregnant and thought she would be unlikely to find a seat on the busy Circle Line. So Peter got on without her – and was caught up in one of the deadly explosions that has haunted him ever since. Tomorrow there will be a service of commemoration at St Paul's Cathedral for those who were killed or injured on the city's transport network. But for Peter, 52, it will be too heartbreaking to return. Here, he explains why. 7/7 survivor Dan Biddle and his rescuer Adrian interview MY wife, Donna, was eight months pregnant with our first child on the morning of July 7, 2005. She had slept poorly, which meant so did I. At Paddington I kissed her goodbye, watched her train disappear into the tunnel, and marched to the Circle Line. I stood in the crowded carriage as the train accelerated towards Edgware Road. Around the same time a bomber got on at that station. As his train passed mine in the tunnel, he detonated his bomb. There was a sudden loud smashing noise which reminded me of the metal on metal of one car hitting another in a high-speed accident. I thought two trains had clipped one another as they passed in the tunnel. The thought of it being a bomb was an alien one. When the emergency lighting returned in the carriage, smoke was beginning to sting our senses. 'Clothes shredded' A family nearby comforted their terrified children. A man to my left grasped at the sealed doors to escape. Panic spread. From the carriage behind, a person asked for help. When a man in front of me moved towards the calling voice, I followed. The coach on the parallel track lay in darkness, but through the sliding doors we could see a leg and an arm wiggling into our train. The limbs belonged to a man trying to force his way through a hopelessly narrow crack in the doors — his clothes shredded, his skin dripping with blood, his face frantic. 8 First responder Paul Dadge helps injured passenger Davinia Turrell at Edgware Road tube station Credit: AP:Associated Press 8 The bombed Edgware Road Circle Line train where six victims died Credit: Gavin Rodgers The man I'd followed into that carriage, who I would later learn was named Tim Coulson, worked with me in a vain attempt to release the door. We smashed the window and jumped across the track into the darkened carriage of the neighbouring train. I climbed through the window frame and slid on a floor that was slick with blood. Bodies, some moving, some frozen, lay strewn about the dim carriage. Screams echoed through the tunnel, all pleading for help. Some were close, some seemed very far away. All were filled with a deep terror. It was a sound I'd not heard before or since. Stepping back and looking down the carriage, I could see a man in a suit trying to revive a woman lying prone on the carriage floor, her clothes almost blown off, with chest compressions. The outcome of that effort had been decided long before he got there. My heart raced, my breathing shortened, my head swelled — I didn't know what to do next. I was experiencing every human emotion at once — I was overwhelmed, incapable, impaired. 8 I felt a hand on my leg, and when I looked down I saw a man lying on his back. He pointed below his waist where I could see he only had one leg. The stump that remained had been tied off with the remnants of a white collared shirt. I took off my suit jacket, folded it and put it under his head. I took off my shirt and ripped it into bandages, strengthening the tourniquet. For more than an hour I lurched through the carriage looking for people I could help, feeling that whatever I did was not enough. When we finally walked through the tunnel into daylight, I phoned Donna. I did not know if she was the victim of another bomb on another train. For 20 years I've lived my life trying to only think of the terror of that day on its anniversary Peter Zimonjic When I heard her voice I broke down for the first time. She had thought it was some kind of fault or disruption. When I told her it was a terror attack, she kicked into survival mode and helped me get home. I wrote an account of my experiences that ran in the Sunday papers immediately following the attacks. A man named Andrew Ferguson who recognised my description of him, of his efforts to help save people that day, reached out to me and we went for a pint. It was like meeting a lost brother. Help people connect For the Tube staff and the emergency service workers, the bombings happened at their place of business, alongside colleagues. But the passengers were all strangers, alien to one another. I set out to fix that and created to help people connect and fill in the blanks of the day. Many became the subject of my book: Into The Darkness: An Account Of 7/7, a retelling of the day we were trapped in the hellish scenes together. When I moved back to Canada two years later, Tim and his wife Judy came to stay with us and over the years we kept in touch. When I flew back for the tenth anniversary of the attack, they sat right behind us in St Paul's Cathedral. We embraced and smiled, so happy to see one another alive and well again. 8 Peter with his wife Donna and their kids Anja and Jakob Credit: supplied 8 Peter's friend Tim Coulson, who died last year Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd For 20 years I've lived my life trying to only think of the terror of that day on its anniversary. The grandest resistance to that horror and death, I have always felt, is to live and to find joy, to love my wife and daughter Anja, now 20, born two weeks after the bombs, and my son Jakob, now 18. As this anniversary approached, I decided not to come back to London to mark the occasion. I wanted to, but I couldn't. Earlier this year the world lost Tim. I wouldn't be able to sit in St Paul's and feel that empty space behind me. The July 7 bombings taught me life is fleeting — which is one thing to know and another to really feel in your bones. Marked by the horror of the day, I was fortunate not to have faced the terrible injuries some survivors have had to bear, or the unfathomable loss of loved ones that others still live without. Most fortunate was that I was able to walk out of that tunnel and into the arms of my wife, that I was able to witness the birth of my children, that I was able to grasp the sunlight and pull myself out of that tunnel to live and love and survive.
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Sandy Gall dead at 97: Veteran News at Ten presenter dies at home
News at Ten presenter Sandy Gall has died at home aged 97, his family have said. The veteran anchor was the face of the show for 20 years, before retiring in 1992 to carry out charity work. Working at the Aberdeen Press and Journal and Reuters before joining ITN, he covered everything from the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He worked at the foreign news agency as a correspondent for a decade, with one of his first assignments to cover the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. While working on the ground for ITN was one of the few journalists to remain in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, having watched the first American marines go ashore at Da Nang, filing pictures from inside a helicopter gunship. In a tribute, his family said: 'His was a great life, generously and courageously lived.' This is a breaking story, more to follow.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Yahoo
Rail disruption following damage to overhead wires between Lockerbie and Carlisle
Rail passengers have been urged not to travel north or south of Carlisle after damage to the overhead line. Pictures show a tree on the line between Lockerbie and Carlisle which has caused delays and cancellations on the line. Passengers are being urged not the travel on June 30, and all tickets will be valid on any Avanti service using the same route on July 1. A spokesperson for Avanti West Coast said: 'Due to damage to overhead wires between Lockerbie and Carlisle, we are advising customers not to travel north or south of Carlisle today, 30 June. READ MORE: Major works to begin in Court Square in the Autumn | News and Star 'If you were due to travel to or from Scotland today, your ticket dated June 30 can be used on any Avanti West Coast train, via the same route tomorrow July 1. 'If you abandoned your journey as a result of today's disruption, your ticket dated June 30 can be used on any Avanti West Coast train, via the same route tomorrow July 1.'
