Abu
Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi,71, is the first suspect
in the attack to face criminal charges in the United States. He
is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Washington.
The bomb exploded aboard a Boeing 747 over Lockerbie as it flew
from London to New York in December 1988. All 259 people on
board were killed, and another 11 people died on the ground.
The Justice Department has alleged that Mas'ud, who is from
Tunisia and Libya, allegedly confessed his crimes to a Libyan
law enforcement official back in September 2012.
It took many years for the FBI to piece together enough evidence
before he could be apprehended and extradited to the United
States.
In 1991, two other Libyan intelligence operatives, Abdel Baset
Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, were charged in the
bombing.
At a Scottish trial before a court at Camp Zeist in The
Netherlands, Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing in 2001 and
was jailed for life. He was later released because he was
suffering from cancer and died at his home in Tripoli in 2012.
Fhimah was acquitted of all charges, but Scottish prosecutors
have maintained that Megrahi did not act alone.
In a 2020 criminal complaint, Mas'ud was charged with
destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of
a vehicle used in interstate commerce by means of an explosive
resulting in death. He was formally indicted on those charges in
November 2022.
Prosecutors do not intend to seek the death penalty because it
was not legally available at the time the crimes were committed.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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