A Libyan man accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan
Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 is in custody in the United
States, Scottish, and US law enforcement officials said on Sunday.

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi was taken into
custody nearly two years after former US Attorney General Bill Barr first
declared the United States filed charges against him. He is expected to make
his first court appearance in a federal court in Washington, DC.

Also Read | Who is Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi?

Pan Am flight 103, also called the Lockerbie bombing,
flight of a passenger airliner operated by Pan American World Airways that
exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, after a bomb was
detonated. The bomb on board the Boeing 747 en route to the United States
killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. The Lockerbie bombing is
the deadliest-ever militant attack in the United Kingdom.

In 1991, two other Libyan intelligence operatives Abdel
Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were charged in the bombing.
According to several speculations, the attack had been retaliation for a 1986
US bombing campaign against Libya’s capital city, Tripoli.

Also Read | What happened to the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1998?

Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi refused to turn over the
two suspects. The US and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) imposed
economic sanctions against Libya. In 1998, Gaddafi finally approved a proposal
to extradite the men.

Megrahi was found guilty and was sentenced to life
imprisonment in 2001. In 2009, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was
released from prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds. He returned to Libya
and died in 2012.

Also Read | Who was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi?

Fhimah was acquitted of all charges, but Scotland
prosecutors have maintained that Megrahi did not operate alone.

The United States announced criminal charges against Mas’ud
2020, a suspected third conspirator, adding he had worked as a technical expert
in building explosive devices.