A man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people after the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, has been arrested in the United States, Scottish and American officials said Sunday. , AFP and CNN.

A Justice Department official confirmed in a statement to AFP the detention of Abu Agilah Mohammad Massoud, about two years after former US Attorney General Bill Barr first announced that the United States had brought charges against him.

A bomb planted on the plane exploded during a flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie after the plane took off from London to New York. It was December 21, 1988, a few days before Christmas. According to News.ro, the attack killed 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground. According to News.ro, the terrorist attack remains the deadliest attack in the United Kingdom and the second deadliest attack on Americans (190 dead) after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The U.S. Department of Justice released a statement Sunday morning (local time) confirming that the United States “has taken into custody the alleged perpetrator of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing,” Abu Aguila Mohammad Mas’ud Khair Al-Marimi, saying he has ” first appearance” in District Court for the District of Columbia.

The statement did not specify a specific date for his hearing, but said more details would follow.

A British official told CNN that the families of those killed in the Lockerbie attack have been told that the suspect “Masood” is in custody in the United States. “Prosecutors and Police Scotland, in cooperation with the British government and their American counterparts, will continue this investigation with the sole aim of bringing to justice those who acted in concert with al-Megrahi,” the official said.

Abdelbeset Ali Mohammed al-Megrahi was accused, along with Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, of planting explosives in a portable cassette player and a radio player that were in the plane’s suitcase. Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years in prison in 2001, but was released after being diagnosed with cancer. He died in 2012. Fhima was acquitted.

In December 2020, 32 years after the tragedy in Scotland, American justice announced that it was prosecuting a former employee of the special services of the time of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Abu Aguila Mohammad Massoud, who was detained in Libya at the time. He is suspected of assembling and programming the bomb.

The regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi officially admitted responsibility for the 2003 Lockerbie bombing and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims’ families. The investigation was reopened in 2016, when American justice learned that Abu Agila Mohammad Masoud was arrested after the fall of the dictator and that he allegedly gave a confession to the special services of the new Libyan regime in 2012.