I think your best option for fixing this is to edit a save to add the Solar Courier to your base inventory. You can do that yourself or upload the save here so one of us can do it for you. The OpenXCom engine is a bit picky about formatting in save files, particularly spacing, but it's not too intimidating.
If you want to do it yourself, I'd recommend using an editor like Notepad++ that keeps spacing for new lines, or an online editor like this one
https://jsonformatter.org/yaml-formatter. Otherwise you just have to manually match the spacing of the new line with the others.
Open your save file, search for "scientists:". At the first result, go to the line directly above that one, which should be space a bit more to the right than the scientists: line, like this example:
STR_ZOMBIE_ESSENCE: 10
scientists: 0
Using my example, create a new line just under STR_ZOMBIE_ESSENCE with the same spacing, and on that new line type in "STR_NEWSPAPER: 1".
STR_ZOMBIE_ESSENCE: 10
STR_NEWSPAPER: 1
scientists: 0
Save the file and load it in XPiratez and you should have one Solar Courier in your first base. If you get an error or the Solar Courier isn't showing up, I'd advise uploading the save here.
I also looked into how the Solar Courier is spawned in Pogroms. It's spawned as an item in the inventory of one of the enemies. So it's entirely possible that you've just been very unlucky with explosives destroying it during pogroms.