Suspect charged in 1988 Lockerbie explosion taken into US custody

Issued on: 11/12/2022 – 19:18

Abu Agila Mohammad Masud was charged by the US two years ago for the Lockerbie bombing. He had previously been held in Libya for his alleged involvement in a 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub.

The Justice Department confirmed in a statement that Masud was in US custody, following an announcement by Scottish prosecutors, without saying how the suspect ended up in US hands.

A department spokesperson said Masud was expected to make an initial appearance in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, but did not specify when.

Only one individual has so far been prosecuted for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on December 21, 1988 — which remains the deadliest terror attack in British history.

Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi spent seven years in a Scottish prison after his conviction in 2001. 

He died in Libya in 2012, always maintaining his innocence.

“The families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi … is in US custody,” a spokesperson for Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said.

“Scottish prosecutors and police, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice.”   

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Libyan connection

Scottish officials gave no information on when Masud was handed over, and his fate has been tied up in the warring factionalism of Libyan politics.

He was kidnapped by a Libyan militia group, according to reports last month cited by the BBC, following his detention for the Berlin attack which killed two US soldiers and a Turkish citizen.

Masud was reputedly a leading bombmaker for Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi. According to the US indictment, he assembled and programmed the bomb that brought down the Pan Am jumbo jet.

The investigation was relaunched in 2016 when Washington learned of Masud’s arrest after Kadhafi’s ouster and death in 2011, and his reported confession of involvement to the new Libyan regime in 2012.

However, the Libyan connection to Lockerbie has long been disputed by some.

In January 2021, Megrahi’s family lost a posthumous appeal in Scotland against his conviction, following an independent review that said a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

The family wants UK authorities to declassify documents that are said to allege that Iran used a Syria-based Palestinian proxy to build the bomb that downed flight 103.

In that narrative, the Lockerbie bombing was retaliation for the downing of an Iranian passenger jet by a US Navy missile in July 1988 that killed 290 people.

(AFP)