Lockerbie Bombing: New suspect expected to be charged in US

Prosecutors are expected to announce charges against a man that is suspected to have assembled the bomb that blew up Pan AM flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, according to news outlets in the US.
An aerial shot of property in Sherwood Park devastated by the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103, Boeing 747 airlinerAn aerial shot of property in Sherwood Park devastated by the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103, Boeing 747 airliner
An aerial shot of property in Sherwood Park devastated by the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103, Boeing 747 airliner

The suspect, Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, is currently being held by Libyan authorities but it is expected that in the next few days the US Justice Department is going to unseal a criminal complaint against him and move to extradite him to America where he will face trial on the charges.

The bombing was the worst terrorist attack in British history, taking place just before Christmas on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people as the plane blew up over Lockerbie in Scotland.

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This coming Monday, December 21, 2020 marks the 32nd anniversary of the attack.

Pan Am flight 103 was travelling from Frankfurt to Detroit, via London and New York. Many of the passengers on board were heading home to spend Christmas with their families.

The flightpath took the plane over Lockerbie, a small town in Dumfries and Galloway when the aircraft was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew.

Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 people on the ground, making it a total of 270 fatalities.

The first two suspects, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law.

Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and was sentence to life in prison while Mr Fhimah was acquitted. Al-Megrahi was given compassionate release almost a decade later by Scottish officials because he had cancer and died in 2012.

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