Officials: Suspect in 1988 Pan Am bombing in US custody
A key suspect in 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, the majority of them Americans, is in U.S. custody, officials confirmed Sunday.
“The United States has taken custody of alleged Pan Am flight 103 bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir AlMarimi,” A Justice Department spokesman said.
He is expected to make an initial court appearance in Washington on charges leveled two years ago in which federal prosecutors charged Masud with destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle of interstate commerce with an explosive.
The Libyan intelligence officer is suspected of helping make the bomb that exploded aboard the Boeing 747 while it was flying over the small Scottish town en route from London to New York.
At the time the charges were announced, then-Attorney General William Barr, who helped lead the initial investigation during his first stint as attorney general, said a “breakthrough” in the case came in 2016, when federal investigators learned that Masud, a longsuspected co-conspirator, had been arrested and interrogated by Libyan authorities in 2012 after the collapse of the Moammar Gadhafi regime.
A copy of the interview and other evidence was provided to U.S. authorities, allegedly linking Masud to the assembly of the explosive.
According to court documents, the operation had been ordered by Libyan intelligence officials, and Gadhafi thanked Masud for “the successful attack on the United States.”
U.S. officials also believe Masud was involved in the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle Discotheque in Berlin, which killed two American service members and a Turkish woman.
In addition to the 259 people killed aboard the flight less than an hour after takeoff, 11 people on the ground were killed as the plane’s wreckage scattered for miles.
In 2001, another Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, became the only person convicted in the attack. He was given a life sentence.
However, despite opposition from the Obama administration, authorities in Scotland released him in 2009 on humanitarian grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died nearly three years later at his home in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, at age 60.
Megrahi maintained he was innocent. At the time of the bombing, he was officially serving as chief of security for the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines.
But prosecutors argued that was a front for his role as a security officer for Jamahiriya Security Organization, Libya’s intelligence branch under thenleader Gadhafi.
Megrahi’s connection to the bombing was established only after investigators discovered a tiny plastic fragment and the remains of a shirt amid the debris. The plastic was determined to be part of the timing device that detonated the bomb. The shirt was packed inside the suitcase. A shop owner testified that Megrahi bought the shirt from her.