Third Lockerbie bomb suspect now in US custody, officials say

A Libyan accused of preparing the bomb that killed 270 people when an explosion ripped through Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 is now in US custody, officials have confirmed.

Masud, a former Libyan intelligence operative, is accused by the US of having set the timer for the bomb that destroyed the Boeing 747, and of being the third man in a plot that was the most deadly terrorist attack to have taken place on British soil.

Two other men were prosecuted at the time, one of whom, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released when he was suffering from terminal cancer, he died in 2012. The second man, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

But US investigators also pursued Masud and finally announced criminal charges against him two years ago. It is not known exactly how he was extradited, but he was previously in detention in Libya.

The Pan Am flight from London Heathrow to John F Kennedy airport in New York exploded at 31,000ft over Scotland on 21 December 1998, after 38 minutes in the air. A total of 259 people were killed onboard, while fiery debris from the exploded plane killed another 11 on the ground in Lockerbie.

According to the US affidavit, Masud was a key figure in the bomb plot and worked with Megrahi and Fhimah to carry it out. Fhimah was later acquitted at a trial.

Investigators say Masud met with the other two in Malta, where he had been directed to fly by a senior Libyan intelligence official with a prepared suitcase. He was asked to set the timer by the other two men, and the suitcase travelled via feeder flights to the hold of the Boeing 747, where it exploded.

At the time Gaddafi was in conflict with the west, but later under his leadership Libya renounced terrorism and accepted responsibility for the aircraft bombing in 2003 in return for relief from economic sanctions.