WASHINGTON — A Libyan intelligence operative charged in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, was arrested by the F.B.I. and being extradited to the United States to face prosecution for one of many deadliest terrorist assaults in American historical past, officers mentioned on Sunday.
The arrest of the operative, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud, was the fruits of a decades-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him. In 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr introduced prison prices in opposition to Mr. Mas’ud, accusing him of building the explosive device used in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 passengers, together with 190 Americans.
Mr. Mas’ud faces two prison counts, together with destruction of an plane ensuing in loss of life. He was being held at a Libyan jail for unrelated crimes when the Justice Department unsealed the fees in opposition to him two years in the past. It is unclear how the U.S. authorities negotiated the extradition of Mr. Mas’ud.
Mr. Mas’ud’s suspected function in the Lockerbie bombing acquired new scrutiny in a three-part documentary on “Frontline” on PBS in 2015. The sequence was written and produced by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed in the assault. Mr. Dornstein discovered that Mr. Mas’ud was being held in a Libyan jail and even obtained photos of him as part of his investigation.
“If there’s one person still alive who could tell the story of the bombing of Flight 103, and put to rest decades of unanswered questions about how exactly it was carried out — and why — it’s Mr. Mas’ud,” Mr. Dornstein wrote in an e-mail after studying Mr. Mas’ud would lastly be prosecuted in the United States. “The question, I guess, is whether he’s finally prepared to speak.”
After Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s chief, was ousted from energy, Mr. Mas’ud confessed to the bombing in 2012, telling a Libyan legislation enforcement official that he was behind the assault. Once investigators discovered in regards to the confession in 2017, they interviewed the Libyan official who had elicited it, resulting in prices.
Even although extradition would enable Mr. Mas’ud to face trial, authorized consultants have expressed doubts about whether or not his confession, obtained in jail in war-torn Libya, could be admissible as proof.
Mr. Mas’ud, who was born in Tunisia however has Libyan citizenship, was the third particular person charged in the bombing. Two others, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, have been charged in 1991, however American efforts to prosecute them ran aground when Libya declined to ship them to the United States or Britain to face trial.
Instead, the Libyan authorities agreed to a trial in the Netherlands below Scottish legislation. Mr. Fhimah was acquitted and Mr. al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in jail.
In 2009, Scottish officers launched Mr. al-Megrahi as a result of he had prostate most cancers, regardless of the strenuous objections of the households of the victims and of American officers, together with President Barack Obama. Mr. al-Megrahi died in 2012; his household posthumously appealed his conviction in Scotland, however last year a panel of judges refused to overturn it.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Mas’ud performed a key function in the bombing, touring to Malta and delivering the suitcase that contained the bomb used in the assault. In Malta, Mr. Megrahi and Mr. Fhimah instructed Mr. Mas’ud to set the timer on the gadget so it might blow up whereas the airplane was in the air the following day, prosecutors mentioned.
On the morning of Dec. 21, 1988, Mr. Megrahi and Mr. Fhimah met Mr. Mas’ud on the airport in Malta, the place he turned over the suitcase. Prosecutors mentioned Mr. Fhimah put the suitcase on a conveyor belt, in the end ending up on Pan Am Flight 103.
Mr. Mas’ud’s identify surfaced twice in 1988, even earlier than the bombing occurred. In October, a Libyan defector instructed the C.I.A. he had seen Mr. Mas’ud on the Malta airport with Mr. Megrahi, saying the pair had handed by way of on a terrorist operation. Malta served as a main launching level for Libya to provoke such assaults, the informant instructed the company. That December, the day earlier than the Pan Am bombing, the informant instructed the C.I.A. that the pair had once more handed by way of Malta. Nearly one other yr handed earlier than the company requested the informant in regards to the bombing.
But investigators by no means pursued Mr. Mas’ud in earnest till Mr. Megrahi’s trial years later, just for the Libyans to insist that Mr. Mas’ud didn’t exist. Mr. Megrahi additionally claimed he didn’t know Mr. Mas’ud.
