WARNING: Major spoilers for episode five ahead.

August 2009, 20 years and 8 months since the Lockerbie disaster, Megrahi is released from prison on compassionate grounds. In his goodbye, he gives a gift to one of the prison guards. Now frail and walking with a cane, Megrahi is transported with a police escort out of the prison to the airport, where he’s flown back to Libya.

Reports are divided, with many condemning the decision to release him. As he lands at the airport and is met by Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, he is met by a cheering party, raising his arms in a seeming victory.

Jim watches from home, and receives a call from a reporter, asking him how he feels and if it has halted his search for justice.

He later meets Megrahi’s defence team, who said he appeared to change his mind at the 11th hour, despite fighting for his appeal and was eligible for release on compassionate grounds. All three aren’t sure what happened, but Megrahi left nothing - just an address and telephone number in Tripoli.

Jim suggests his hand was forced, but they all know they’ll never truly find that out. Taking the number and address, he tries to phone Megrahi, but gets no answer. New reports reveal that, despite his initial diagnosis being he would live only three months, he was still alive a year later. Jim is interviewed, and they ask if he thinks Megrahi “got away with it”, which he deems offensive.

He publicly claims that he feels Megrahi was forced into dropping the appeal so the truth could not be scrutinised, and declares him the 271st victim of Lockerbie. This infuriates Jane, and once the cameras leave, she storms out of the house.

Guthrie comes to visit Jim at his home, and comments that he looks exhausted. Guthrie comments that he found new information about Megrahi through the Wikileaks scandal, with the Libyans making a direct threat to the UK to get Megrahi home. All trade and political ties (ie. oil trading) would cease if Megrahi died in prison.

They speculate Megrahi was compromised for the sake of a massive oil deal. This is later denied by the government as it goes public.

As years pass, war breaks out in Libya, with reports saying Gaddafi was the one who commanded the bombing, and Jim spirals. He tries to call Megrahi, begging for answers, but at this point he is so ill he is no longer speaking English.

One evening, Jane goes to check on Jim in his office but he is missing, leaving behind his phone, she panics and tries to find him, before finding him at their bench by the river. He is soaking wet and cold, and he admits to her that he doesn’t know what to believe anymore. He says he feels like he’s wasted his life on the case.

Jane tells him to go to Libya to see Megrahi, even though he doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead at this point. Jane says she knows this is the only way he’ll find out the truth.

On his arrival, taxis are hesitant to take him where he needs to go, but one driver accepts him. With militia all over the streets, the driver proves helpful in talking with them to get him through barricades. When he knocks on the door, he is met by two brutish security guards who hold him at gunpoint and threaten him, but Megrahi’s wife hears the commotion and gets them to stand down.

Megrahi is now frail and bed bound, and apologises for breaking his work about the appeal. Jim asks why, and Megrahi said he could only return home on one condition: he remains guilty. He comments he’s a “player in a bigger game” and nobody but Jim cares about his innocence. Megrahi urges Jim to keep fighting, and gives him a folder of his own investigation, showing discrepancies in the testimonies including with the timer.

Megrahi credits the love of his family for keeping him alive, noting how “we should never forget the dead, but it’s sweeter to live with the living”. He promises when he dies, he hopes to see Flora, and will tell her of what Jim has done, but it’s time for him to go home with their family. With that, Jim and Megrahi say goodbye for the final time.

Arriving home, Jane greets him at the airport and they embrace. She offers him the chance to go to the Isle of Skye with his children and grandkids and he accepts.

On the way home, he shares his findings to Guthrie in a café, who questions where the fragment came from, and Jim believes it was planted by someone in the UK or US to frame Megrahi. Guthrie also questions why Libya were so desperate to get Megrahi back and notes he thinks Gaddafi was involved. He ultimately thinks it was a combination of all theories, noting that people underestimate how much the West is unliked.

As he says goodbye, he goes to the counter, where the waitress comments on his Lockerbie badge, not knowing what Lockerbie even was.

While in their holiday home in the Isle of Skye, Jim hears the news report that Megrahi has died at his home in Libya, then joins his family on the beach. Jim and Jane reflect on the years that have passed and what happens to Lockerbie, conceding they might never know what happened. Jim joins his family in a cricket match, before he returns to his main home with Jane, and they move out to start life afresh.

To date, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi is still the only person to have been convicted of the bombing on Pan Am Flight 103.

His family are continuing to fight to clear his name.

During Megrahi’s second appeal, the British government signed a public interest immunity certificate, preventing the disclosure of secret intelligence documents allegedly implicating Iran and the PFLP-GC.

In 2020, they signed a second immunity certificate to keep these intelligence documents secret. They remain classified to this day.

Contradictory documents, declassified by the Foreign and Commonwealth office, have revealed several Libyan intelligence officials admitting involvement in the bombing, including Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s “right hand man”.

In 2022, the US government extradited Libyan national Abu Agila Mas’ud, who they claim built the bomb that was used on Pan Am 103, and was a co-conspirator of Megrahi’s.

His trial date is now set for May 12, 2025.

Jim Swire is continuing to campaign for justice, with many others believing Megrahi innocent.

They maintain the PFLP-GC, supported by Iran, was responsible for the building and loading of the bomb that killed the 270 passengers, crew and residents of Lockerbie.

To date, there has still never been a full independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster.