Libya militia held Lockerbie suspect before handover to U.S.

Cairo — Around midnight in mid-November, Libyan militiamen in two Toyota pickup trucks arrived at a residential building in a neighborhood of the capital of Tripoli. They stormed the house, bringing out a blindfolded man in his 70s.

Their target was former Libyan intelligence agent Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, wanted by the United States for allegedly making the bomb that brought down New Yorkbound Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, just days before Christmas in 1988. The attack killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground.

Weeks after that night raid in Tripoli, the U.S. announced Mas’ud was in its custody, to the surprise of many in Libya, which has been split between two rival governments, each backed by an array of militias and foreign powers.

Analysts said the Tripoli-based government responsible for handing over Mas’ud was likely seeking U.S. goodwill and favor amid the power struggles in Libya.

Four Libyan security and government officials with direct knowledge of the operation recounted the journey that ended with Mas’ud in Washington.

The officials said it started with him being taken from his home in the Abu Salim neighborhood of Tripoli. He was transferred to the coastal city of Misrata and eventually handed over to American agents who flew him out of the country, they said.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Several said the United States had been exerting pressure for months to see Mas’ud handed over.

“Every time they communicated, Abu Agila was on the agenda,” one official said.

In Libya, many questioned the legality of how he was picked up, just months after his release from a Libyan prison, and sent to the U.S. Libya and the U.S. don’t have a standing agreement on extradition, so there was no obligation to hand Mas’ud over.

The White House and Justice Department declined to comment on the new details about Mas’ud’s handover. U.S. officials have said privately that in their view, it played out as a by-the-book extradition through an ordinary court process.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with briefing regulations, said Saturday that Mas’ud’s transfer was lawful and described it as a culmination of years of cooperation with Libyan authorities.

Libya’s chief prosecutor has opened an investigation following a complaint from Mas’ud’s family. But for nearly a week after the U.S. announcement, the Tripoli government was silent, while rumors swirled for weeks that Mas’ud had been abducted and sold by militiamen.