WASHINGTON — 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 explosive appeared Monday in federal court, charged with an act of international terrorism.
The extradition of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi marked a milestone in the decades-old investigation into the attack that killed 259 people aboard the plane and 11 on the ground. His arrival in Washington sets the stage for one of the Justice Department’s more significant terrorism prosecutions in recent memory.
“Although nearly 34 years have passed since the defendant’s actions, countless families have never fully recovered,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson said during a court proceeding attended by victims’ relatives.
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. Citizens from 21 countries were killed. Among the 190 Americans on board were 35 Syracuse University students flying home for Christmas after a semester abroad.
The bombing laid bare the threat of international terrorism more than a decade before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and produced global investigations and punishing sanctions. Several victims’ relatives who weren’t sure a criminal case would ever be brought described as surreal the news that Mas’ud was finally in American custody.
Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband, Michael, was a Justice Department prosecutor returning from England aboard Pan Am 103, said she felt a “tremendous amount of satisfaction.” She said her husband prosecuted Nazis and felt strongly that there was no statute of limitations for murder.
“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.
Outside the courthouse Monday, Paul Hudson carried a photograph of his daughter, Melina, a 16-year-old student who had been returning for the Christmas holidays from an exchange program. He recalled how, after the crash, her belongings were scattered around the Lockerbie countryside. The family did get back her passport and her notebook.
“And the notebook had, on the cover, the quote ‘No one dies unless they’re forgotten,’ and I’ve tried to live by that,” he said. Remembrances of his daughter are an “everyday thing” and “this time of year, it gets stronger.”