The suspect in the 1988 bombing that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, made his first appearance in federal court in Washington on Monday to face a charge of international terrorism.
The Justice Department announced Sunday that Libyan intelligence officer Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi had been taken into US custody. His arrest comes nearly two years after the Justice Department revealed that he had been charged in connection with the explosion.
FILE – This photo provided by the Alexandria, Virginia Sheriff’s Office shows Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, who is in custody at the Alexandria Adult Detention Center, on December 12, 2022 in Alexandria. , Virginia.
(Alexandria Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Two other Libyan intelligence officials have been charged in the United States for their alleged role in the attack, but Mas’ud is the first defendant to appear in a US court for trial.
The New York-bound Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after taking off from London on December 21, 1988. Citizens of 21 countries were killed. Among the 190 Americans on board were 35 Syracuse University students who were flying home for Christmas after a semester abroad.
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“Although nearly 34 years have passed since the defendant’s actions, countless families have never fully recovered,” Assistant US Attorney Erik Kenerson said during a court proceeding attended by relatives of the victims.
Mas’ud, bearded and bald, dressed in the green prison uniform and staggered to the defense table. He occasionally spoke through an interpreter, and the federal defenders who represented him at the hearing said he wanted to be represented by his own attorneys.
At one point, while the charges were being discussed, Mas’ud said in Arabic: “I can’t talk until I see my lawyer.”
A detention hearing was set for later in the month.
FILE – A man looks at the main memorial stone in memory of the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in the Garden of Remembrance near Lockerbie, Scotland, Friday, December 21, 2018.
(AP Photo/Scott Heppell, File)
The bombing exposed the threat of international terrorism more than a decade before the attacks of September 11, 2001. It produced global investigations and punitive sanctions while spurring demands for accountability from the victims of the dead.
The Libyan government initially refused to hand over the two men, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, before finally handing them over for trial before a panel of Netherlands-based Scottish judges as part of a special deal.
FILE – Unidentified accident investigators inspect the nose section of Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747 aircraft that crashed in a field near Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 23, 1988.
(AP Photo/Dave Caulkin, File)
The Justice Department, which did not disclose how Mas’ud came to be detained by the United States, has said that Mas’ud faces two criminal charges related to the blast.
A breakthrough in the investigation came when US officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a veteran explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan police in 2012 after being detained. after the collapse of the government. of the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.
Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is shown listening in this courtroom sketch drawn during an initial appearance in the US District Court in Washington, US, December 12, 2022.
(REUTERS/Bill Hennessy)
In that interview, US officials said, Mas’ud admitted to building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and to working with two other plotters to carry out the attack. He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gaddafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
That affidavit said that Mas’ud told Libyan police that he flew to Malta to meet al-Megrahi and Fhimah. He handed Fhimah a medium-sized Samsonite suitcase containing a bomb, and had already been instructed to set the timer for the device to go off exactly 11 hours later, according to the document. He then flew to Tripoli, the FBI said.
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Al-Megrahi was convicted in the Netherlands, while Fhimah was cleared of all charges. Al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison, but Scottish authorities released him on humanitarian grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later died in Tripoli, still protesting his innocence.
