A police officer walks past the nose of Pan Am Flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Martin Cleaver/AP
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Martin Cleaver/AP
A police officer walks past the nose of Pan Am Flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Martin Cleaver/AP
US authorities have arrested a Libyan man suspected of making the bomb that destroyed a passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people, including 190 Americans.
“The United States has arrested the alleged Pan Am Flight 103 bomb-maker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi,” a Justice Department spokesman said in a statement to NPR.
The Crown Office and the Finance Authority of the Scottish Procuratorate confirmed that the families of those killed in the bombing had also been informed of the arrest.
“Scottish prosecutors and police, working with the UK Government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing out those who acted alongside Al Megrahi. before justice,” the office said in a statement.
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded into pieces over Lockerbie, Scotland after a bomb was placed in the plane’s cargo area. The bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history and the second deadliest attack on Americans after September 11, 2001. The plane took off from London and was en route to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York .
Based on federal official, passengers and crew from 21 different countries were killed in the attack. Of the 190 Americans killed, 35 of them were students from Syracuse University in upstate New York who were returning home for the holidays from a semester abroad.
The attack launched a decades-long international manhunt for the bomb-makers.
In 2020, the US government announced a overate in the case – they discovered that the Libyan authorities had arrested Mas’ud, a former Libyan intelligence officer, and interviewed him about his participation in the bombing. In that interview, Mas’ud admitted to making the bomb that brought down the plane, according to the Ministry of Justice.
In 2020, the Justice Department charged Mas’ud with destroying an aircraft resulting in death and destroying a vehicle with explosives resulting in death.
The department said he will make his first appearance in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Kara Weipz, president of the group, Pan Am Flight 103 Victims, told CBS the latest arrest is a tribute to the federal government’s commitment to ensuring justice for victims. and their family.
“Getting one of those responsible for the murders of our loved ones to go to court in America, is one of the most important things for the family and all of us,” said Weipz, brother of Mr. Richard Monetti, who was killed in the massacre, said. Lockerbie bombing.
Mas’ud is said to have set a timer for the explosives
Federal officials say Mas’ud was summoned by Libyan authorities in the winter of 1988 to travel to Malta with a suitcase used to carry out the attack. According to the Justice Department, he was joined by two other Libyan intelligence officers, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, in Malta.
There, Masud was instructed to prepare a timer inside the suitcase so that an explosion would explode exactly 11 hours later. The next day, at the airport, Mas’ud gave the suitcase to Fhimah, who then placed the luggage on the conveyor belt, according to the Justice Department. Mas’ud and two others returned to Libya, where former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi thanked them for carrying out the operation, according to federal officials.
The Lockerbie bombing is considered the most complex investigation in US history
The FBI says that the Lockerbie case is one of the The most complex investigation they used to work on. Investigators interviewed more than 10,000 people around the world and analyzed the largest crime scene in recent history – about 845 square miles with scattered debris.
In the wreckage, authorities found two small pieces of debris that helped track the bomb: a radio inside the luggage and an explosive timer on a shirt.
In 1991, the US and British governments charged Megrahi and Fhimah, two Libyan intelligence agents suspected of working with Mas’ud. They were tried in Scottish court a year later, where Fhimah was acquitted and Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2009, in a controversial moveThe Scottish government allowed Megrahi to return to Libya on humanitarian grounds after he developed terminal prostate cancer.
