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Lockerbie bombing suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi appeared at a federal court hearing Monday in Washington, D.C., grousing about the flu, as he was formally hit with terrorism charges in the horrific December 1988 attack.
The three charges against Mas’ud, 71, include “destruction of aircraft resulting in death,” which carries the death penalty. But prosecutors reportedly contend they don’t plan to pursue death because the punishment wasn’t constitutionally available in 1988.
US Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather told Mas’ud about the criminal counts against him and read him his rights. But Mas’ud didn’t enter a plea, saying he wanted to retain his own counsel.
He also told Meriweather he “took some medication and I have some flu,” an interpreter recounted.
Meriweather set a Dec. 27 hearing to give him time to retain a lawyer.
The brief hearing was the first time a suspect in the case has faced justice on US soil.
Prosecutors alleged the former Libyan intelligence agent flew to Malta with a suitcase bomb to meet his co-conspirators, who instructed him to set a timer on the device ahead of the attack.
The alleged terrorists placed it on the conveyer belt where it was eventually sent to Frankfort before being transferred to the doomed Dec. 21, 1988, flight, according to the criminal complaint.
The explosion on the London to New York-bound plane killed all 259 people aboard, including 190 Americans, as well as 11 people on the ground in the small Scottish town.
Mas’ud, a top bomb-maker for then-Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, allegedly confessed to the crime in 2012 after the dictator’s regime was dissolved.
Qaddafi had labeled the attack a “total success” and met with Mas’ud afterwards to thank him for “carrying out a great national duty against the Americans,” prosecutors alleged in the complaint that was unsealed Monday.
