Lockerbie bombing suspect in 1988 Pan Am flight is in US custody, says Justice Department
Lockerbie bombing anniversary: Attorney General Barr unveils new charges in 1988 attack
The Libyan intelligence officer is suspected of helping make the bomb that exploded aboard the Boeing 747 while it was flying over the small Scottish town en route from London to New York.
At the time the charges were announced, then-Attorney General William Barr, who helped lead the initial investigation during his first stint as attorney general, said a “breakthrough” in the case came in 2016, when federal investigators learned that Masud, a long-suspected co-conspirator, had been arrested and interrogated by Libyan authorities in 2012 after the collapse of the Moammar Gadhafi regime.
In 2001, another Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, became the only person convicted of the attack. He was given a life sentence.
However, despite opposition from the Obama administration, authorities in Scotland released him in 2009 on humanitarian grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died nearly three years later at his home in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, at age 60.
Megrahi maintained he was innocent. At the time of the bombing, he was officially serving as chief of security for the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines.
But prosecutors argued that was a front for his role as a security officer for Jamahiriya Security Organization, Libya’s intelligence branch under then-leader Gadhafi.
Megrahi’s connection to the bombing was established only after investigators discovered a tiny plastic fragment and the remains of a shirt amid the debris. The plastic was determined to be part of the timing device that detonated the bomb. The shirt was packed inside the suitcase. A shop owner testified that Megrahi bought the shirt from her.