‘Time for justice.’ Miami widow of Pan Am bombing victim applauds suspect’s arrest
For decades, Victoria Cummock has awaited the day there was justice for her husband and the 269 other people who were killed in a terrorist attack in Europe.
Now, she’s one step closer.
On Sunday, the U.S. had one of the suspected attackers in custody. At a news conference Monday in the courtyard of her home near Coral Gables, Cummock spoke about the arrest, which she called the “first tangible step made by the U.S. Department of Justice in 34 years.”
Abu Agila Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is accused of building the bomb that detonated on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. The terrorist attack killed all 259 people on board and 11 others on the ground.
The U.S. pressed criminal charges against Mas’ud in 2020 before he was taken into American custody sometime Sunday morning. He was arraigned in Washington, D.C., on Monday. 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.
Cummock’s husband, John Cummock, 38, was heading back to the U.S. from a business trip in London. The couple’s three young kids were awaiting him in their South Florida home days before Christmas when the president of his company delivered the news at their door the night of the crash.
Since then, Cummock, now 69, founded the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Legacy Foundation and set out on a quest to hold the attackers accountable. She has worn a “Pan Am 103 Time for Justice” pin on her lapel since 1989 on visits with several presidents and U.S. administrations.
But Cummock felt little had been done by American leaders until now.
“U.S. authorities have never arrested or prosecuted any suspects in 34 years,” Cummock said. “To the American families, this felt like a betrayal by the U.S. authorities and our government.”
When Abdel Basset alMegrahi, who was convicted in Scotland for his role in the bombing, died of prostate cancer in 2012, Cummock shared her frustration. Al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on a “humanitarian waiver” after he served eight years of his life sentence.
“I feel a sense of relief that he is gone,” Cummock told the Miami Herald in 2011. “There really is no sense of justice.”
But there might now be justice for the victims — and the families who lost loved ones in the 1988 attack. At the news briefing, Cummock thanked President Joe Biden and U.S. officials.
“For the first time in 34 years, I was hopeful that we could have one of the perpetrators come to a U.S. courtroom and hold them accountable,” Cummock said. “I wasn’t sure if within my lifetime we would be able to see the day.”