A man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people after blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 is in custody in the United States, Scottish and American law enforcement said Sunday. Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi was taken into custody about two years after former US Attorney General Bill Barr first announced that the United States had brought charges against him.
A Justice Department official confirmed to Reuters on Sunday that the United States had taken into custody the alleged bomb maker from Pan Am Flight 103. Mas’ud is expected to make his first appearance in federal court in Washington, D.C. Further details on the timing of the court hearing will be finalized, the spokeswoman added.
The families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told the suspect is in custody in the US, a spokesman for the Crown and Prosecution Service for Scotland (COPFS) said on Sunday. A bomb on board a Boeing 747 en route to the United States killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground, the deadliest militant attack in Britain to date. In 1991, two more Libyan secret service agents were charged with the bombing: Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.
Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing and was jailed for life in 2001. He was later released because he was suffering from cancer and died in 2012. Fhimah was acquitted of all charges, but Scottish prosecutors argued that Megrahi did not act alone.In 2020, the United States unsealed criminal charges against Mas’ud, a suspected third.
