DELAYED JUSTICE

Man Accused of Making Bomb That Blew Up 1988 Pan Am Flight in U.S. Custody

The explosion left 259 passengers and crew members—including 190 Americans—dead.

A Libyan man accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 is now in U.S. custody, according to The New York Times. The 1988 flight from London to New York exploded midair, leaving 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people dead from the wreckage in Lockerbie, Scotland. 190 Americans were killed in the attack. Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud was in a Libyan prison for unrelated crimes when the U.S. announced charges against him in 2020, including for the destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. The charges came after his alleged role in the explosion came to light in a 2015 PBS special produced by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed on the flight. “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 Mr. Mas’ud,” Dornstein wrote in an email to The New York Times. “The question, I guess, is whether he’s finally prepared to speak.”