The Justice Department announced on Sunday that a Libyan intelligence official who is suspected of creating the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 as part of a global act of terrorism has been taken into American custody and will face federal charges in Washington. An important step has been taken in the long-running investigation into the attack that resulted in the deaths of 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground with the arrest of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi. Check further details in the article below.
In December 2020, charges were made against Mas’ud, who was being held in Libyan prison at the time. He would be the first Libyan intelligence official to face charges in an American courtroom, despite being the third to be accused in the US in relation to the attack. On December 21, 1988, a little more than an hour after takeoff from London, a Pan Am aircraft destined for New York detonated over Lockerbie. There were 21 different nationals dead.
35 Syracuse University students who were returning home for Christmas after a semester abroad were among the 190 Americans on board. More than ten years before the September 11 attacks, the bombing made clear the danger posed by global terrorism. It led to widespread inquiries and harsh fines while igniting demands for accountability from the families of the victims. The arrest, according to the university’s current chancellor Kent Syverud, was an important step forward in the protracted effort “to bring those guilty for this vile conduct to justice.”
When told what had occurred, Bernstein remarked in an interview, “At first I thought I was dreaming, but it’s happened, and I’m really grateful that this individual will be tried in the United States. Mas’ud’s charges were unveiled on December 21, 2020, the 32nd anniversary of the bombing, and during the final days of the administration of then-Attorney General William Barr, who in the early 1990s, during his first term in office, had unveiled charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials.
Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were eventually turned over by the Libyan government after initial reluctance, as part of a special arrangement, for prosecution before a panel of Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands. In a federal court in Washington, where he is charged with two crimes related to the explosion, the Justice Department said that Mas’ud would show up soon. Stay connected with Social Telecast for more updates.
