Suspect arrested 34 years after plane bombing — RT World News
Abu Agila Mohammad Masud was reportedly abducted from his Tripoli home last month
A Libyan man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people in the deadliest terror attack on British soil has been taken into custody by the US Department of Justice, a security guard confirmed on Sunday. word. Abu Agila Mohammad Masud will be tried in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The bomb allegedly made by Masud killed 259 passengers and crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 others on the ground as it destroyed the plane flying over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
While US officials declined to give details of how Masud ended up in their custody, last month it was reported that he had been abducted by armed men from his residence in Tripoli.
Masud was only charged with terrorism conspiracy in 2020, when the United States sought his extradition based on a confession he allegedly made to Libyan authorities during his arrest following the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya in 2012. According to US officials, Masud confessed to building the bomb and working with two accomplices to carry out the attack, operating under instructions from Libyan intelligence.
Masud’s pursuit only began after the death of the previous suspect, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was released from a life sentence on humanitarian grounds due to a terminal cancer in 2009 and died three years later.
Convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in 2000, al-Megrahi maintained his innocence to the end, backed by human rights activists like Nelson Mandela and even the father of one of the passengers on the convicted flight.
Another Libyan intelligence officer accused of participating in the attack, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. Masud will be the only one of the three defendants in the attack to stand trial in a US court.
The suspect had previously been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Libya for building a bomb that was used in another attack.
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