Suspect in bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in court
More than three decades after a bomb brought down Pan Am Flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard, a former Libyan intelligence official accused of making the explosive appeared Monday in federal court, charged with an act of international terrorism.
The extradition of
Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-marimi marked a milestone in the decades-old investigation into the attack that killed 259 people aboard the plane and 11 on the ground.
His arrival in Washington sets the stage for one of the Justice Department’s more significant terrorism prosecutions in recent memory.
The Justice Department announced Sunday that Mas’ud had been taken into U.S. custody, two years after it revealed that it had charged him in connection with the explosion. Two other Libyan intelligence officials have been charged in the U.S. for their alleged involvement in the attack, but Mas’ud was the first defendant to appear in an American courtroom for prosecution.