Scotland says Lockerbie bomb suspect in US custody

The Libyan Intelligence Officer accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 killing 270 people, has been taken into US custody, the Scottish authorities said Sunday.

In December 2020, the United States indicted Mohammed Abu-Agela Masoud who was in Libyan custody at the time, for his alleged involvement in a 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub.

The Scottish Public Prosecution Service said “families of those who were killed have been told that Masoud had been extradited to the United States”.

“Scottish prosecutors and police, in coordination with the UK government and their colleagues in the US, will continue the investigation to bring those involved with Megrahi to justice.”

OPINION: Outrage over her Lockerbie comment puts Libya’s foreign minister on the spot

The second suspect in the attack, former Libyan Intelligence Officer, Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, spent seven years in a Scottish prison after being convicted in 2001, and died in Libya in 2012. Megrahi has always pleaded “not guilty”.

The regime of the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, had officially admitted responsibility for the 2003 Lockerbie bombing and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the victim’s families.

However, the investigation was reopened in 2016, when the US Judiciary learned that Masoud had been arrested after the fall of the Gaddafi regime and that he had allegedly confessed in 2012.

The Lockerbie attack is the deadliest ever on UK soil and the second deadliest attack against Americans, with 190 victims after the 11 September, 2001 attack.