A Libyan citizen, Abu Aghila al-Massoud, who is accused of playing a key role in the Lockerbie air disaster, has been arrested in the US and is scheduled to appear before a Washington court.
On December 21, 1988, a PAN AM Boeing B747 passenger plane, which was on its way to London, exploded on flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. 270 passengers, crew members and residents of the town of Lockerbie, perished in the disaster, which was the worst terrorist attack on British soil.
The BBC and CNN networks report that last month Al-Masoud was kidnapped by militia members in Libya, and there were rumors that they handed him over to the US authorities to prosecute him.
In 2001, another lobbyist, Abdulbast al-Magrahi, was convicted of planting the bomb in the plane, tried in a court in Scotland and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 2009 when he was diagnosed with cancer, and died in Libya in 2012.
The Office of the Attorney General of Scotland said that the families of those killed in the Lockerbie disaster have been informed of Al-Masoud’s arrest. He is accused of creating the bomb that blew up the plane. The US Department of Justice confirmed that the man was arrested and will appear in court, and that already in 2020, accusations were made against him regarding his involvement in the attack.
Documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation say that al-Masoud was an explosives expert and worked for Libyan intelligence. At some point he admitted that he prepared the bomb together with two accomplices, and that the explosion was carried out at the initiative of the Libyan intelligence. The then ruler Gaddafi even thanked Al-Masaud and his friends for carrying out the deadly attack.