Libyan suspect charged in 1988 Lockerbie bombing taken into custody by FBI

A Libyan intelligence operative charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was arrested by the FBI, officials said Sunday.

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Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud was charged by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr in 2020, The New York Times reported. The Justice Department accused Mas’ud of building the explosive device used in the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing that killed 259 passengers, including 190 Americans and 11 crew members, the newspaper reported.

In a statement, Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said that, “The families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is in U.S. custody.”

The Lockerbie bombing is the deadliest terrorist incident in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC.

Another 11 people died on the ground when wreckage from the jumbo jet bound for New York from London destroyed their homes, the news organization reported.

In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing the flight, The Associated Press reported. He was the only person convicted over the attack.

Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was also charged in 1991, but efforts to prosecute him and Megrahi were scuttled when Libya declined to send them to the U.S. or Britain to stand trial.

Instead, the Libyan government agreed to a trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law, according to the Times. Fhimah was acquitted.

Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison but was released in 2009 after being diagnosed with cancer, the BBC reported. He died in Libya in 2012.

Mas’ud faces two criminal counts, including the destruction of an aircraft resulting in death, the Times reported. He was being held at a Libyan prison for unrelated crimes when the charges against him were unsealed in 2020. It is unclear how the U.S. government negotiated the extradition of Mas’ud.

“Scottish prosecutors and police, working with U.K. government and U.S. colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice,” the Crown Office said in a statement.

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