On Monday, a man who is said to have worked for Libyan intelligence appeared in a US court to answer charges related to the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland, which killed 270 people and was Britain’s deadliest act of terrorism ever.
Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir al-Marimi is charged with three counts in connection with the Lockerbie bombing.He is said to have served as an intelligence agent for Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya between 1973 and 2011.
According to federal prosecutors, the death penalty would not be sought, although Masud could receive a life sentence if found guilty of “destruction of an aircraft resulting in death” and two other connected offenses.
Masud, who is 71 years old, was told about the charges and his rights by the judge in a US District Court in Washington. He was then ordered to be held without bond until a hearing on December 27.
Masud’s first time in court after being brought to the country was at this hearing, and he was given an Arabic interpreter.
The Tunisian-born Masud was in US custody, according to a statement made by Scottish prosecutors on Sunday, but no information on how that happened has been released.
She went on to say, “This action shows how committed the Biden Administration is to upholding the rule of law and holding accountable those who hurt Americans through acts of terrorism.”
Assembling Masud was “a crucial step forward in our mission to memorialize the victims and achieve justice on behalf of their loved ones,” according to US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Garland says that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Scotland say the people who did this terrible thing have been found, identified, and brought to justice.
He was thanked by Gaddafi.
For the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988, only one person has been found guilty.
38 minutes after takeoff from London, the plane headed for New York was destroyed by an explosion, sending the main fuselage crashing to the ground in Lockerbie and scattering debris over a large area.
All 259 occupants of the jumbo jet, including 190 Americans, were killed in the bombing, along with 11 bystanders.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, two alleged Libyan intelligence agents, were accused of carrying out the bombing and were brought before a Scottish court in the Netherlands.
Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to seven years in a Scottish prison; Fhimah was found not guilty.
Megrahi passed away in Libya in 2012 while adamantly defending his innocence.
But in 2021, after his family asked for a posthumous appeal to clear his name in 2017, Scotland’s High Court upheld his conviction.
Masud’s future is tied to the political war in Libya that broke out after Gaddafi was killed and overthrown in 2011.
Masud may have been jailed in Libya because he is thought to have attacked Libyan opposition activists in 2011.
A September 2015 article in The New Yorker said that Masud was given a 10-year prison sentence in Libya because he was thought to have used bombs with remote detonators against people in the Libyan opposition in 2011.
When Washington learned of Masud’s arrest and his alleged admission of complicity to the new Libyan leadership in 2012, the Lockerbie investigation was reopened in 2016.
An affidavit from an FBI agent working on the case says that Masud was a “technical expert” for the Libyan External Security Organization, where he made bombs and rose to the rank of colonel.
According to the affidavit, Masud admitted building the bomb that brought down Flight 103 during a 2012 interrogation with a Libyan law enforcement official.
Masud “indicated that the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing operation was directed by Libyan intelligence leadership,” the statement read.
Masud said that Gaddafi thanked him and the other people on the team after the operation for the successful attack on the US.
Blinken gives “diplomatic endeavor” credit.
In the FBI agent’s statement, Masud also said that he was responsible for the April 1986 bombing of the Berlin LaBelle Discotheque, which killed two US service members and a Turkish woman.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked all of the people who helped bring Masud into US custody “after a long diplomatic effort.”
According to Blinken, “Masud’s prosecution is the result of years of cooperation between US and Scottish officials, as well as the efforts of Libyan authorities over a long period of time.”
