Lockerbie bombing anniversary: Attorney General Barr unveils new charges in 1988 attack Kevin Johnson and Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
Lockerbie bombing anniversary: New charges unveiled in 1988 Pan Am 103 attack
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Outgoing Attorney General William Barr unveiled new charges Monday against another suspect in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, the majority of them Americans.
Federal prosecutors charged Abu Agila Mohammad Masud with destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle of interstate commerce with an explosive. The Libyan intelligence officer is suspected of helping make the bomb that exploded aboard the Boeing 747 while it was flying over the small Scottish town en route from London to New York.
Outgoing Attorney General William Barr unveiled new charges Monday against another suspect in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed Quincy s Thomas Edwin Walker, Milton s Cynthia Joan Smith and 168 other people.
Federal prosecutors charged accused Abu Agila Mohammad Masud with destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle of interstate commerce with an explosive resulting in death. The a Libyan intelligence officer, who is suspected of helping to make the bomb that exploded aboard the Boeing 747 while it was flying over the small Scottish town en route from London to New York.
The wreckage of the airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland
Credit: ROY LETKEY /AFP
For decades, Abu Agila Mas’ud was such a shadowy and elusive figure that investigators wondered if he should be called “The Ghost”. Yet the FBI eventually tracked down the man they plan to charge with making the Lockerbie bomb, partially through the unwitting help of East German intelligence, and dogged detective work by a Lockerbie victims brother, The Telegraph can reveal.
During years of painstaking detective work, the FBI agents felt he lived up to this other-worldly sobriquet because they had no image or reports of what The Ghost looked like, or even of his real identity.
HEADLINES & GLOBAL NEWS
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Dec 17, 2020 01:04 PM EST
Here are the facts about the Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The tragedy took the lives of many people after the takeoff from London on December 21, 1988.
The Pan Am Flight 103 at Lockerbie, Scotland blew up at 31,000 feet after it left London. At approximately 38 minutes while in the air, it exploded.
Onboard were 259 people riding the Boeing 747 that would never reach its destination. All with the passengers who died, eleven people killed by accident on the ground, reported CNN.
American and British investigators investigated why the plane was destroyed, gathered the debris, and found parts of the circuit board and timer suspected to be a bomb, instead of any mechanical malfunction that caused the explosion.
Terrorism and War-Related Airplane Crashes Fast Facts
Here’s a selected list of commercial airplane crashes caused by military acts or by terrorism.
June 14, 1940 – Soviet bombers shoot down the Kaleva, a Finnish commercial plane traveling from Estonia to Finland, killing all nine on board. One passenger was Henry W. Antheil Jr., an American diplomat who was carrying diplomatic pouches from US legations in Estonia and Latvia.
March 3, 1942 – Japanese aircraft shoot down a KNILM flight on its way to Broome, Australia. The plane crash-lands on the beach at Carnot Bay. Four people die.
June 1, 1943 – British actor Leslie Howard is among 17 killed when German fighters shoot down a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight over the Bay of Biscay.