Accused Lockerbie Bombmaker Is in FBI Custody, Being Extradited to U.S. to Face Prosecution
Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud, the Libyan bombmaking expert accused of building the explosive device that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, is in FBI custody, American and Scottish authorities reported on Sunday.
On Dec. 21, 1988, the Boeing 747 was carrying 259 crew and passengers, including 190 Americans, on a flight from London to New York City when the bomb exploded, sending the plane crashing to the ground in Lockerbie and killing everyone on board. Eleven more people were killed by plane wreckage that struck their homes.
The Lockerbie bombing is the deadliest terror attack to have ever taken place in Britain, and Mas’ud’s arrest “was the culmination of a decades-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him,” reported The New York Times.
The Libyan operative faces two charges, including destruction of an airline resulting in death. Attorney General Bill Barr announced the unsealing of the criminal accounts against Mas’ud in 2020. At the time, Mas’ud was imprisoned in Libya on unrelated charges.
It is not yet known how American authorities negotiated to take custody of Mas’ud. He will soon be extradited to the U.S. to face trial in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
Two other men, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged in 1991 for their alleged roles in the bombing, but the Libyan government refused to extradite them to the U.S. or Britain, agreeing instead to a trial set in the Netherlands and operating under Scottish law. At that trial, Fhimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After being diagnosed with prostate cancer, Scottish officials released al-Megrahi despite the protestations of President Barack Obama, other U.S. officials, and the families of the victims. He died in 2012.
Mas’ud is accused of assembling the bomb and meeting al-Megrahi and Fhimah at the airport, where he set the timer on the bomb so it would explode while the plane was in the air. Fhimah then allegedly put the suitcase on a conveyor belt, where it was eventually loaded onto the plane.
Watch above via CNN.
