The suspect in the Lockerbie bombing was arrested on Sunday.
“The United States has taken custody of the suspected bombmaker of Pan Am Flight 103, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi,” a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to Fox News. “He is expected to make his initial appearance in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Additional details, including information about public access to the initial appearance, will be forthcoming.”
The statement gave no information on how Mas’ud came to be in US custody.
The Crown Office and the Prosecutor for Scotland’s Fiscal Service said in a statement that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that suspect Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is in US custody. “.
DOJ ANNOUNCES CHARGES AGAINST LOCKERBIE BOMBMAKER, A QADHAFI ‘HIT MAN’
Pan Am Flight 103, en route from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on board the plane and 11 others on the ground. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil.
A police officer walks across the nose of Pan Am Flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, where it lay after a bomb exploded on board, killing a total of 270 people, on Wednesday, December 21. from 1988.
The US Department of Justice announced new charges against Mas’ud in December 2020, on the 32nd anniversary of the attack.
Families of the victims of Pan Am 103 which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland due to a terrorist bomb, arrive at JFK airport, New York, New York, December 21, 1988.
(Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images)
“At last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be brought to justice for his crimes,” William Barr, the Trump administration’s attorney general at the time, said at a news conference.
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, at the Department of Justice on December 21, 2020.
(Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)
In 2001, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of bombing the flight. He is to date the only person convicted of the attack. He lost one appeal and dropped another before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was terminally ill with cancer.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with police officers at the wreck of Pan Am Flight 103 after it crashed in the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 22, 1988.
(Georges DeKeerle/Getty Images)
He died in Libya in 2012, still protesting his innocence.
A breakthrough in the investigation came when US officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a veteran explosives expert with Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after being arrested after the collapse of the regime. the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.
Carisa Harris-Adamson, from San Francisco, places an American flag on a wreath placed in memory of her uncle John Cummock, who was on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 when it was bombed over Lockerbie, during a service to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster, in the Memorial Garden, Dryfesdale Cemetery, Lockerbie, South West Scotland, on December 21, 2018.
(JANE BARLOW/AFP via Getty Images)
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 it out. 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.
People identified as some of the family members of those killed in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland, watch a United Nations Security Council meeting, September 9, 2003, at the UN headquarters in New York.
(STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images)
While Mas’ud is now the third Libyan intelligence official to be charged in the US in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to be tried in a US court.
Helga Mosey, 19, center, with her family, the Rev. John Mosey, right, mother Lisa, and brother Marcus. Helga, a gifted music student, was among the 259 passengers and crew who died when the plane flew out of the skies over Lockerbie just 38 minutes after takeoff. She was returning to New Jersey, where she worked as a nanny before taking a place at Lancaster University.
(PA Images via Getty Images)
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The Crown Office in its statement added that “Scottish prosecutors and police, working with the UK government and their American colleagues, will continue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing to justice those who acted in conjunction with the -Megrahi”.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
