More than three decades after a bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard, a former Libyan intelligence official accused of making the bomb appeared Monday in federal court.
The artist sketch depicts Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson, front left, watching as Whitney Minter, a public defender from the eastern division of Virginia, stands to represent Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, in federal court in Washington, Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, as Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather listens.
The Justice Department announced Sunday that Mas’ud had been taken into U.S. custody, two years after it revealed that it had charged him in connection with the explosion. Two other Libyan intelligence officials have been charged in the U.S. for their alleged involvement in the attack, but Mas’ud was the first defendant to appear in an American courtroom for prosecution.The New York-bound Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after takeoff from London on Dec. 21, 1988.
“He had a fortune cookie adage on his door that said, ‘The law sometimes sleeps, but it never dies.’ This shows that the law never dies, that the United States government is going to take care of its citizens in life and in death and that the government has not forgotten,” Bernstein said. The bearded and balding Mas’ud wore a green jail uniform, and walked with a halting gait to the defense table. He spoke occasionally through an interpreter, and the federal defenders who represented him at the hearing said he wanted to be represented by lawyers of his own choice.
In Mas’ud’s case, a newly unsealed Justice Department indictment includes three charges related to the explosion, including destruction of an aircraft, resulting in death. Prosecutors said in court that they would not be pursuing the death penalty because that punishment was not available for those specific crimes at the time the bombing occurred.
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