The Justice Department 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 operative for Libyan intelligence, 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 officer to fly to Malta with a bomb concealed in a suitcase that would later explode aboard Pan Am Flight 103, killing a total of 270 people.
According to the Justice Department, Mas’ud set a timer for the bomb to explode on board the flight the next day and transported it to the airport, where he handed it over to an accomplice who placed the bomb on a conveyor belt attached to the plane.
Only former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been convicted of the bombing to date, charged for his role in the attack in 2001. He did not appeal his conviction afterwards, but was released in 2009 after it was determined that he I was terminal. cancer patient. He died in 2012 in Libya, maintaining his innocence for the rest of his life.
LOCKERBIE BOMBING SUSPECT IN CUSTODY
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London’s Heathrow International Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was destroyed, with the wreckage landing 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 police following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, admitted to building the bomb in the attack on Bread Am.
US officials say Mas’ud admitted during the interview that the attack was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gaddafi personally thanked him and others involved for their role.
The Justice Department announced charges again against Mas’ud in 2020 on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing.
“At last, this man responsible for killing Americans and countless others will be brought to justice for his crimes,” William Barr, the attorney general at the time, said when the charges were announced.
Scottish rescuers and accident investigators search the area around the cockpit of Pan Am Flight 103 in a farmers field east of Lockerbie Scotland after mid-air bombing killed all 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people in Earth.
(Reuters)
DOJ APPROACHES CHARGES AGAINST LIBYAN BOMBMAKER 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 people on the ground in the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil. . More than 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 US Attorney General Bill Barr holds a press 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 initial appearance in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Additional details, including information regarding public access to the initial appearance, will be forthcoming,” a Justice Department spokesperson told Fox News.
