Libyan operative charged in 1988 Lockerbie bombing is in FBI custody

A Libyan intelligence operative charged in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, was arrested by the FBI and is being extradited to the United States to face prosecution for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history, officials said on Sunday. The arrest of the operative, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud, was the culmination of a decades-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him. In 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr announced criminal charges against Mr. Mas’ud, accusing him of building the explosive device used in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 passengers, including 190 Americans. Mas’ud faces two criminal counts, including destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He was being held at a Libyan prison for unrelated crimes when the Justice Department unsealed the charges against him two years ago. It is unclear how the US government negotiated the extradition of Mas’ud. Mas’ud’s suspected role in the Lockerbie bombing received new scrutiny in a three-part documentary on “Frontline” on PBS in 2015. The series was written and produced by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed in the attack. Dornstein learned that Mas’ud was being held in a Libyan prison and even obtained pictures 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 Mas’ud,” Dornstein wrote in an email after learning Mas’ud would finally be prosecuted in the United States. “The question, I guess, is whether he’s finally prepared to speak.”<br/>