After 34 years, the United States says the Libyan who made the deadly Lockerbie bomb was in custody

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The US Department of Justice said on Sunday that a Libyan intelligence official accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 in an act of international terrorism, has been arrested by the United States and will face federal charges in Washington. .

The arrest of Abu Ageila Masoud Khair al-Marimi is a significant milestone in the decades-old investigation into the attack, which killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground. In December 2020, US authorities announced that Masoud, who was being held in Libya at the time, would be charged. Although he is the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the United States in connection with the attack, he will be the first to appear in a US court for trial.

The New York-bound Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after it took off from London on December 21, 1988. Citizens from 21 different countries were killed. Of the 190 Americans on board, 35 were students from Syracuse University traveling home for Christmas after a semester abroad.

The bombing exposed the threat of international terrorism more than a decade before the 9/11 attacks. He has produced global investigations and sanction after sanction while urging demands for accountability from the victims of the murders.

The announcement of the charges against Masood on December 21, 2020 came on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing and in the final days of the term of then-Attorney General William Barr, who was the Attorney General in the early 1990s. He announced criminal charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials.

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The Libyan government initially balked at handing over the two men, Abd al-Basit Ali al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fahima, before eventually handing them over for trial before a panel of Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands as part of a private arrangement.

In 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted of the plane bombing. He is so far the only person convicted of the attack, with Fhimah being acquitted. Al-Megrahi lost one appeal and gave up another before he was released in 2009 on humanitarian grounds because he was suffering from cancer. He died in Libya in 2012, and continues to protest his innocence.

A man looks at the main memorial stone commemorating the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in the Garden of Remembrance near Lockerbie, Scotland, December 21, 2018. (Scott Heppell/AP)

His family continued to fight a legal battle to clear his name, alleging that the bomb was built by a Palestinian agent of Iran based in Syria.

The Justice Department said Masood will soon appear in federal court in Washington, where he faces two criminal charges related to the blast.

US officials did not say how Massoud arrived in US custody, but in late November, local Libyan media reported that Massoud had been kidnapped by gunmen on November 16 from his residence in Tripoli, the capital. Those reports referred to a family statement accusing the Tripoli authorities of remaining silent about the kidnapping.

In November 2021, Najla Mangoush, the foreign minister in the Tripoli government, told the BBC in an interview: “We, as a government, are very open in terms of cooperation in this matter,” when asked if possible extradition.

Libya, riven by civil war since 2011, is divided between two rival governments in the east and west, each backed by international patrons and numerous armed militias on the ground. Militia groups have amassed significant wealth and power from kidnappings and their involvement in the lucrative human trafficking trade in Libya.

A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a transcript of an interview that Massoud, a longtime explosives expert in Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after his detention in the wake of the collapse of the Islamic Republic’s government. The country’s leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

In that interview, US officials said, Massoud confessed to building the bomb in the Pan American attack and working with other co-conspirators 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 FBI affidavit in the case.

The acknowledgment said that Massoud had told Libyan law enforcement authorities that he had traveled to Malta to meet with al-Megrahi and Fhimah. He handed Fahima a medium-sized Samsonite bag containing a bomb, after he had already been instructed to set the timer so that the device would detonate after exactly 11 hours, according to the document. The FBI said he then traveled to Tripoli.

In announcing the charges against Masood in 2020, Barr said the United States and Scotland would use “every possible and appropriate means” to prosecute him.

“Finally, this man responsible for killing Americans and so many others will be brought to justice for his crimes,” Barr said at the time.

This December 1988 file photo shows wrecked homes and a deep gash in the ground in the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, after the bombing of Pan Am 103 in the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. (AP-Photo/Martin Cleaver, file)

The Scottish Crown Office and the Attorney General’s Financial Service on Sunday also announced the arrest, saying in a statement that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been informed that the suspect is in US custody”.

The statement added that “the Scottish Public Prosecution Service and police, working with the UK government and colleagues in the US, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing to justice those who acted with Megrahi.”

It is suspected that the Lockerbie bombing was in retaliation either for the US strikes in Libya in 1986 that killed the daughter of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, or for the downing of an Iranian airliner by a US Navy missile in July 1988 that killed 290 people.

The Megrahi family sought British authorities to declassify documents they believe allege that Iran used a Syrian-based Palestinian proxy – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) – to build the bomb that brought down the Boeing. 747.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command has been designated a terrorist group by several countries, including Britain and the United States.

Weeks before the Lockerbie bombing, four devices identical to those soon to be used on Flight 103 were found in the possession of arrested PFLP-GC members in a suburb of Frankfurt. It was reported at the time that the PFLP-GC cell was planning to bomb planes bound for the United States and Israel. A fifth bomb in the possession of the Frankfurt cell was said to have gone missing, and some believe this was the device that blew up Flight 103.

The fact of the matter is still in dispute.

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