US announces new charges in Lockerbie bombing 32 years after deadly terror attack

Abu Agila Mas'ud, the man suspected of being Gaddafi's master bomb-maker

The United States on Monday unsealed criminal charges against another suspect in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

The suspect, Abu Agila Mas’ud, is a Libyan intelligence official charged with two criminal counts related to the bombing, the deadliest terror attack in modern British history.

After the onboard explosion at 30,000 feet, the plane crashed on the ground in Lockerbie, a town in southern Scotland.

The breakthrough has come after years of little public progress on the case.

William Barr, the US attorney general, held a press conference on Monday to detail the new charges and the investigation behind them.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr Mas’ud is in custody in Libya and will be extradited to the United States to stand trial.

Previously just two people had been charged over the bombing and Abdel Baset al-Megrahi is the only person ever convicted over the attack. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a second suspect, was acquitted.

Al-Megrahi, also Libyan, was convicted by Scottish judges in 2001. He was sentenced to life in prison but was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The move infuriated the US government at the time and victims’ families despite an assessment that he had just months left before his death he lived until 2012.