Lockerbie Bombing Suspect Who Allegedly Helped Take Down Pan Am Flight 103 in US Custody

The man who officials say allegedly made the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, Abu Aglia Mohammad Mas'ud, is now in the custody of U.S. officials.

Mas’ud’s arrest comes two years after then-Attorney General Bill Barr first announced the charges filed against him. 

The deadliest terror attack on British soil took place on December 21, 1988, when a bomb went off on the flight from London to New York, killing 270 people – including all 259 on board and another 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, when the wreckage landed on their homes.

According to the BBC, Mas’ud was reportedly kidnapped last month in Libya, which triggered speculation that he would soon be turned over to American authorities. 

Kara Weipz, president and spokesperson of the group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, whose brother was killed in the bombing, spoke CBS News about the arrest.  

"To have one of the people responsible for the murder of our loved ones stand trial in the U.S. is one of the most important things to the families and to all of us," Weipz said. "The amount of people involved — we kept it on the forefront of six administrations."

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the only person convicted of bombing the flight in 2001. He lost one appeal and abandoned another before being freed in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was terminally ill with cancer. He died in Libya in 2012, still protesting his innocence.

According to Reuters, Mas’ud will make his initial court appearance in a federal court in Washington. 

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