FBI arrests Libyan agent accused of bombing a plane crash over Lockerbie in 1988

A Libyan intelligence agent accused of bombing a US airliner locker, Scotland, in 1988, was arrested by the FBI and extradited to the United States to face trial for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history, authorities said Sunday.

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud’s arrest was the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him. In 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr announced criminal charges against Mas’ud, accusing him of constructing the explosive device used in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, whichIt killed 270 passengers, including 190 Americans.

Mas’ud faces two criminal charges, including destroying an aircraft resulting in his death. He was being held in a Libyan prison for unrelated offences when the Justice Department revealed the charges against him two years ago. It is unclear how the US government negotiated Mas’ud’s extradition.

Mas’ud’s alleged role in the Lockerbie bombing has received new scrutiny in a three-part documentary about “Frontline” on PBS in 2015. The series was written and executive produced by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed in the attack. Dornstein learned that Mas’ud was being held in a Libyan prison and even obtained photographs of him as part of his investigation.

The man

“If there is one person alive who could tell the story of the bombing of Flight 103 and end decades of unanswered questions about exactly how it was done, and why, it is Mas’ud,” wrote Dornstein. in an email after learning that Mas’ud would eventually be prosecuted in the United States. “The question, I guess, is whether he’s finally ready to talk.”

After Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya, was ousted from power, Mas’ud confessed to the 2012 bombing and told a Libyan law enforcement officer that he was behind the attack. Once investigators learned of the confession in 2017, they interviewed the Libyan official who had obtained it, leading to the filing of charges.

Although extradition would allow Mas’ud to stand trial, Legal experts have expressed doubts that his confession, obtained in prison in war-torn Libya, would be admissible as evidence.

Mas’ud, born in Tunisia but with Libyan citizenship, was the third person charged in the attack. Two others, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted in 1991, but US efforts to prosecute them failed when Libya refused to send them to the United States or Britain for trial.

Instead, the Libyan government agreed to a trial in the Netherlands under Scots law. Fhimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2009, Scottish officials released al-Megrahi because he had prostate cancer, despite strong objections from the victims’ families and US officials, including President Barack Obama. Al-Megrahi died in 2012; his family posthumously appealed his sentence in Scotland, but last year a jury refused to overturn it.

Key role

Prosecutors say so. Mas’ud played a key role in the attack, traveling to Malta and delivering the suitcase containing the bomb used in the attack. In Malta, Megrahi and Fhimah ordered Mas’ud of Fruse the timer on your device exploded while the plane was in the air the next day, prosecutors said.

On the morning of December 21, 1998, Megrahi and Fhimah they met Mas’ud at the Malta airport, where he handed over the suitcase. Prosecutors said Fhimah placed the suitcase on a conveyor belt and it eventually ended up on Pan Am Flight 103.

Mr. Mas’ud’s name appeared twice in 1988, even before the attack occurred. In October, a Libyan defector told the CIA that he had seen Mas’ud at Malta airport with Megrahi, saying the two had been involved in a terrorist operation.

Malta has been the main launching point for Libya to launch such attacks, the insider told the agency. That December, the day before the Pan Am bombing, the informant told the CIA that the couple had again passed through Malta. almost another year went by before the agency asked the informant about the bombing.

But investigators never seriously prosecuted Mas’ud until Megrahi’s trial years later, only for the Libyans to insist that Mas’ud did not exist. Megrahi also claimed that he did not know Mas’ud.