US Attorney General Bill Barr on Monday announced criminal charges against the alleged Libyan bombmaker in the 1988 terrorist attack on the Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. 

Barr said that the former Libyan intelligence operative ‘Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi’, helped build the bomb that exploded aboard the aircraft, killing 259, including 190 Americans, and 11 people on the ground, AFP reported. 

“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others, will be subject to justice for his crimes,” Barr said. 

Monday marked 32 years since the incident, aboard the Pan Am Boeing 747 jet, which originated from Frankfurt and was bound for Detroit, with stops in London and New York. The Bomb exploded when the plane was en route from London to New York. 

While informing President Donald Trump of his resignation as Attorney General, Barr asked to hold his departure for a week to allow him to announce charges in this case, CNN quoted sources as saying. 

Earlier in his service with the Justice Department under President George H W Bush, Barr had announced charges against two other suspected with links to Libyan intelligence, Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah. The US had accused these men of placing the explosives in portable cassettes  and a radio player in a suitcase aboard the plane.

Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi had later accepted the country’s responsibility for the bombing. 

They were tried in a Scottish court sitting in The Netherlands, which resulted in Fhimah’s acquittal and Megrahi’s conviction, who was given a 27-year prison sentence. He was released after being diagnosed with cancer and died in 2012. 

Mas’ud is believed to be in Libya, with US officials saying they were discussing with Libyan authorities to take him into custody.