32 years on... new Lockerbie bomb suspect identified
A SUSPECT could face trial for the Lockerbie bombing after being identified days before the 32nd anniversary of Britain’s deadliest terror atrocity.
Former intelligence officer Abu Agila Mas’ud – a top bomb-maker for Libyan dictator Col Gaddafi – is said to be in custody awaiting extradition to the US.
He reportedly confessed to building the device that downed Pan Am flight 103 when questioned in 2012, the Wall
Devastation: A police officer near the wreckage of the Pan Am plane blown up above Lockerbie in 1988
Street Journal said. The blast, on December 22, 1988, killed 259 on board a Boeing 747 from London to New York.
Another 11 died when it came down on Lockerbie in Dumfries. Victims included 190 Americans and 43 Britons.
The case comes after information was passed to the FBI by US journalist Ken Dornstein, whose brother David
died in the attack. He traced Mas’ud for a TV documentary in 2015.
He said yesterday: ‘It matters for all the families that the facts be known.’
Only one man has been convicted of the bombing – Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, found guilty of mass murder in 2001.
He spent eight years in jail but was freed in 2009 because of terminal prostate cancer and died in 2012. Judges in Edinburgh are deciding whether to
acquit him after a third appeal by his family. Libya denied the bombing before accepting responsibility in 2003 and offering $2.7billion compensation.
Campaigner Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the atrocity, believes Megrahi was innocent. He said: ‘I can’t see how a connection can be made to the bombing with this guy, but it is quite possible. I hope some truth will come out of what’s happening.’