The Justice Department has unsealed charges against a Libyan bombmaker in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced new charges Monday against a Libyan bombmaker in the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, an attack that killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground. Attorney General William Barr speaks during a news conference Monday, at the Justice Department in Washington. (Michael Reynolds/Pool via AP) The charges were announced on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing and in the final news conference of Attorney General William Barr’s tenure, underscoring his personal attachment to a case that unfolded during his first stint at the Justice Department. He had announced an earlier set of charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials in his capacity as acting attorney general nearly 30 years ago, vowing that the investigation would continue. Though Barr had not appeared at a news conference in months, he led this one two days before his departure as a career bookend. In presenting new charges, the Justice Department is revisiting a case that deepened the chasm between the United States and Libya, laid bare the threat of international terrorism more than a decade before the Sept.11 attacks and produced global investigations and punishing sanctions. The case against the alleged bombmaker, Abu Agela Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, is for now more theoretical than practical since Masud is not in U.S. custody and it is unclear if he ever will be, or if the evidence will be sufficient for conviction. But it nonetheless represents one of the more consequential counterterrorism announcements from the Trump administration Justice Department. “At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” Barr said. A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Masud, a longtime explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
