Libyan who allegedly built Lockerbie bomb is in US custody

A Libyan man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people after it blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988 is in custody in the United States, Scottish prosecutors said Sunday.

The country's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said the families of those killed in the bombing had been informed that Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi was now under arrest.

He had previously been held in Libya for his alleged involvement in a 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub.

The US Justice Department confirmed the development, adding that Mas'ud is expected to make his initial appearance in court in Washington, DC.

The department gave no details on how he came to be in US custody.

While Mas'ud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the US in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to stand trial in an American courtroom.

What happened to Pan Am flight 103?

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was flying from London to New York when a bomb on board the Boeing 747 jet exploded over the small town of Lockerbie in Scotland.

Lockerbie lies approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Glasgow and 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the border with England.

The blast, which remains the deadliest terror attack on British soil, killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

Two other Libyan intelligence operatives were charged in the bombing in 1991: Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.

Megrahi was jailed for life in 2001 but was later released on compassionate grounds due to cancer. He died in 2012.

Fhimah was acquitted of all charges, but Scottish prosecutors have maintained that Megrahi did not act alone.

Charges against Mas'ud first filed in 2020

Former US Attorney General Bill Barr first announced charges against Mas'ud two years ago, accusing him of working as a technical expert in building explosives.

Mas'ud was reputedly a leading bombmaker for the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

According to the US indictment, he assembled and programmed the bomb that brought down the Pan-Am jet.

A breakthrough in the case came when US officials in 2017 received a copy of a confession that Mas'ud had given to the new Libyan regime in 2012 after Gadhafi's toppling and death.

Mas'ud admitted to building the bomb used in the Pan-Am attack and working with two other conspirators to carry it out.

He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence, and that Gadhafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

mm/fb (AFP, AP, Reuters)