Trial started against suspected Lockerbie bomb maker No billions for Orban: EU freezes funds for Hungary

On Sunday it was announced that the US federal police FBI had arrested the 71-year-old suspect of Tunisian-Libyan descent. He is now being tried in the US. “This is an important step in our mission to honor victims and seek justice on behalf of their families,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday in Washington.

On December 21, 1988, terrorists blew up a Pan Am passenger jet en route from London to New York over the Scottish city of Lockerbie. 270 people were killed, including 190 Americans and 11 local residents from falling debris. The background to the terrorist attack has never been fully clarified.

For decades, US authorities have been trying to prosecute the now arrested man. In December 2020, former US Attorney General William Barr charged him with 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 remained open. In the United States, he faces a life sentence, according to the Justice Department.

The British authorities believe that a Libyan terrorist commando committed the murder. Only one suspect, Libyan ex-secret service officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was arrested in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment for mass murder. However, in 2009 he was released in Scotland on health grounds. He died in Tripoli in 2012. He had always maintained his innocence. (sda/dpa)