34 years after the deadly attack on a Pan Am plane over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, the alleged bomb maker has appeared before a US court for the first time.
On Sunday, it became known that the US federal police FBI arrested the 71-year-old suspect of Tunisian-Libyan origin. He is now on trial in the US.
The December 1988 assassination killed 270 people, including 190 Americans and 11 local residents who were killed by falling debris. The background to the terrorist attack has never been fully elucidated.
For decades, US officials have tried to prosecute. In December 2020, former United States Attorney General William Barr accused him of involvement in the attack. At the time, he was being held in Libya for other crimes. The circumstances under which the man was arrested or extradited to the United States remain open. In the United States, he faces a life sentence, the Justice Department said.
British authorities assume that a Libyan terrorist commando carried out the assassination. Only one suspect, former Libyan secret service officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 for mass murder. However, in 2009 he was released from custody in Scotland on health grounds. He died in Tripoli in 2012. He has always maintained his innocence.