The Justice Department has announced that Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi has been taken into US custody and will face charges for his alleged role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Mas’ud was a longtime Libyan intelligence agent, including serving as an expert in the construction of explosive devices from about 1973 to 2011, according to the Justice Department. In the winter of 1988, he was ordered by a Libyan intelligence official to fly to Malta with a bomb disguised in a suitcase which would later explode aboard Pan Am Flight 103, killing a total of 270 people.
According to the Justice Department, Mas’ud set a timer so that the bomb would go off on board the flight the next day and transported it to the airport, where he gave it to an accomplice who planted the bomb on a conveyor belt tied to the plane.
To date, only former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been convicted of the bombing, charged for his role in the 2001 attack. He did not later appeal his conviction, but was released from prison in 2009 after it was determined he was terminally ill with cancer. He died in 2012 in Libya, maintaining his innocence for the rest of his life.
LOCKERBIE SUSPECT FOR Bombing Bombing IN CUSTODY
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow International Airport in London to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was destroyed, and the remains landed in and around the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.
But a breakthrough in the investigation in 2017 led investigators to Mas’ud, who, in an interview with Libyan law enforcement agencies following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi, admitted that he had built the bomb in the Pan Am attack.
US officials say Mas’ud admitted in an interview that the attack was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that he and others who participated were personally thanked by Gaddafi for their role.
The Justice Department announced charges against Mas’ud again in 2020, on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing.
“Finally, this man responsible for killing Americans and many more will be brought to justice for his crimes,” William Barr, the then attorney general, said when the charges were announced.
Scottish rescuers and accident investigators scour the area around the cockpit of Pan Am Flight 103 in a farm field east of Lockerbie, Scotland, after a mid-air bombing killed all 259 passengers and the crew and 11 people on the ground.
(Reuters)
DOJ CLOSE TO EMBODIMENT AGAINST LIBYAN BOMB MANUFACTURER IN 1988 LOCKERBIE ATTACK
Pan Am Flight 103 was en route from London to New York when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground in the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil. Over 100 of the victims of the attack were Americans.
Mas’ud will become the first suspect to stand trial for the attack on US soil.
Former United States Attorney General Bill Barr holds a news conference to provide an update on the investigation into the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on the 32nd anniversary of the attack.
(Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images))
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“He is expected to make his first appearance in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Additional details, including information about public access to the first appearance, will be available,” a Justice Department spokesperson told Fox News. .
