Lockerbie bombing suspect in US custody
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A Libyan man suspected of being concerned within the Lockerbie bombing has been taken into custody within the United States, Scottish authorities stated on Sunday.
He is accused of constructing the bomb that blew up the Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, killing 270 folks.
“The families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Massoud is in custody in the United States,” Scottish prosecutors stated in an announcement.
“Scottish prosecutors and police, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with Al Megrahi to justice,” it added.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, additionally Libyan, is the one one that has been convicted in reference to the assault, probably the most lethal act of terrorism in British historical past.
Megrahi was jailed for all times however was launched on compassionate grounds by the Scottish authorities in 2009 after being recognized with most cancers.
He died in Libya in 2012.
The assault focused a transatlantic flight from London to New York.
The plane, a Pan Am Boeing 747, exploded on 21 December 1988 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie.
All 259 passengers and crew on board the aircraft have been killed, together with 11 folks on the bottom by wreckage hitting their properties.
In December 2020, the US introduced that it could prosecute Massoud, a former member of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence companies. He was in Libya on the time.
It will not be recognized when and below what situations Massoud was handed over to the US.
Last month it was reported that Massoud had been kidnapped by a militant group in Libya, fuelling hypothesis that may be given to the Americans to face trial.
The Lockerbie bombing is the deadliest ever terrorist assault dedicated on UK soil but in addition the second deadliest in opposition to US residents, after the assaults of September 11, 2001.
190 Americans died within the explosion.
Gaddafi’s regime formally acknowledged accountability for the Lockerbie bombing in 2003, paying 2.7 billion euros in compensation to the victims’ households.
The investigation was relaunched in 2016 when the US discovered that Massoud had been arrested after the autumn of Gaddafi.
He allegedly confessed to the intelligence companies of the brand new Libyan regime in 2012.
Five years in the past Massoud was serving a jail sentence in Libya
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