Foreign Office failed us, say survivors of terrorist attacks

Families whose loved ones were caught in terror attacks abroad have called the Foreign Office’s response poor and unprofessional, with some saying they were told their relatives had survived when in reality they were dead, according to a new report.

Survivors Against Terror, a campaign group, will on Wednesday publish its findings based on interviews with 270 people who have been affected by terrorism.

Giving Voice to Survivors, the first report of its kind, found almost half of those involved in foreign attacks – 49% – described the support they received from the government and agencies in the country where the attack happened as poor or adequate.

Support from the UK government wasn’t much better. A similar proportion – 46% – said support was poor. Only 19% called it very good or exceptional. “These are shocking figures and suggest a serious overhaul of consular assistance is required,” the report states.

“From older attacks like Bali to more recent ones like Tunisia, the Foreign Office has simply failed to provide the support the public would expect, and that survivors deserve,” said Jo Berry, a board member of Survivors Against Terror, who lost her father, Anthony, in the 1984 Brighton IRA bombing. “We have heard consistent reports of unprofessional treatment, lack of capacity and even families being told their loved ones had survived when they hadn’t. It’s critical the Foreign Office listens to the voices of survivors and overhauls their approach to mass incidents affecting British citizens overseas.”

Maggie Stephens’s son, Neil Bowler, was murdered in the Bali 2002 bombing. “There were individual people in the Foreign Office who were good and quite caring, but as an organisational response it was poor,” Stephens said. “You don’t know what to ask and where to go. You are very isolated. Getting through to speak to somebody was dreadful. We were on the hotline for hours. We were relying on news reports.”

It was two months before the family was allowed to bring Neil’s body home. “Those two months were grim,” Stephens said. “We were in a huge state of shock and there was no information. Talking to others [who have been caught up in more recent attacks], it seems things have not got much better.”

Elizabeth McMillan was on the beach in the Tunisian resort of Sousse in June 2015 when a gunman killed 38 people, 30 of whom were British. “We were 20ft from him when he started shooting,” she said. “I watched him walk along shooting people.” McMillan said there was no offer of support from the government for those who were not injured in the attack. “The advice when you come back is to contact Samaritans, contact the health service, contact your GP, contact victim support – there is not a government department for you to contact. It’s all charities and voluntary organisations.”

McMillan is a member of several Facebook groups for those affected by terror attacks, none of whom, she said, “has a good word to say about the Foreign Office”. She said she had spoken to a survivor of the Paris Bataclan attack. “She was trapped under the stage and when she landed at Edinburgh airport she was handed a leaflet that said ‘You have been involved in a terrorist attack’. Tunisia was scored out and Paris had been written over it.”

Patrick Grady, the SNP MP for Glasgow North, raised her case in parliament along with that of two constituents caught in the aftermath of the Stockholm terror attack. Grady said they had told him: “We are seriously concerned about the gap between expectations and reality when it comes to the support that the FCO provides. Care, concern and understanding were not offered to us by the FCO when we tried to contact the embassy and then phone the emergency consular assistance number. We felt that we were completelyabandoned, and that sense of abandonment could put other UK citizens at greater psychological risk because they are made to feel helpless.”

One close relative of someone murdered in a terrorist atrocity five years ago, who asked not to be identified, told the Observer that the Foreign Office had appointed as its person of contact a family member who was estranged from some other members of the family.

“So we got a lot of information that was not correct, a lot of different stories. I’ve only really found out the truth of what happened this year after going to the Foreign Office and demanding to be told. It’s caused a lot of family upset and for me personally. I think the Foreign Office need to look at how they distribute information.”

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We have over 750 consular staff in 268 locations and in 2017 they assisted British nationals in over 30,000 cases, with nearly 4,000 of those being deaths abroad. We welcome feedback and use it to improve our services and staff training.”