Who is Mas’ud Al-Marimi? Suspected Lockerbie bombmaker who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in US custody

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The Wall Street Journal on December 16, 2020, cited senior justice department officials to say the department is likely “to unseal a criminal complaint” against Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, who was held in Libya and “to seek his extradition for trial” in a US federal court. Among the Americans who perished in the incident were 35 students from Syracuse University, New York. Many of the Americans on the ill-fated flight were returning home from Europe for the Christmas holiday. The flight was blown up less than an hour after it took off from Frankfurt, Germany, on its way to Michigan via London and New York City. 

While one man -- former Libyan intelligence official Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- was convicted of the bombing, a second Libyan suspect -- Lamin Khalifa Fhimah -- was acquitted of all charges. al-Megrahi was handed a life sentence but Scottish authorities released him under humanitarian considerations in 2009 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in Tripoli in 2012. Masud, on the other hand, is said to have confessed to his role in the bombing of the flight when questioned in 2012. In July 2015, Scottish judges ruled that relatives of the victims of the bombing should not be allowed to pursue an appeal on behalf of Megrahi. Earlier, the courts had ruled that only next of kin could make a posthumous application. In July 2017, Megrahi’s family made a fresh bid to appeal against his conviction while in March this year, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission said Megrahi’s conviction can be taken to a fresh appeal, as reported by MEAWW.

According to court documents, the federal government refers to Mas'ud as a skilled bombmaker who first joined a Libyan intelligence unit in the 1970s. The police's ability to link Mas'ud to the Pan Am attack after 34 years is fairly astonishing. Court documents state that a garment was wrapped around a portion of the device that was found at the crash site. That substance was ultimately located on the island of Malta where it is known to police that he and two other guys assembled the device that ultimately exploded on Flight 103.