Almost 34 years ago to date, a Libyan intelligence officer allegedly arrived in Malta from Tripoli carrying a suitcase which he handed to two men who were waiting to greet him at the old Luqa airport.

That suitcase contained a bomb which, days later, was to be dispatched as unaccompanied luggage to London where it was transferred to a New York-bound aircraft and blew up over the Scottish village of Lockerbie. It killed 259 passengers.

The man who carried the suitcase was Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, and Scottish prosecutors have announced that he is now in US custody.

Only one individual has so far been convicted for the bombing of Pan Am bombing – Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi. He spent seven years in a Scottish prison after his conviction in 2001 and died in Libya in 2012, always maintaining his innocence.

But late on Sunday Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service announced that Masud was now in US custody.

"Scottish prosecutors and police, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice."

No further information was given on when Masud was handed over, and his fate has been tied up in the warring factionalism of Libyan politics. He had previously been held in Libya for his alleged involvement in a 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub, where many Americans were also killed.

Masud was charged in absentia by the US two years ago for the Lockerbie bombing. An FBI criminal complaint and request for an arrest warrant made against Masud in a US court explains how the US-Scottish investigation continued after the fall of the Libyan Gaddafi regime in 2011.

In 2017, the FBI received a copy of an interview conducted by a Libyan law enforcement officer of Masud while he was in Libyan custody. FBI agents and officials from Police Scotland also interviewed the Libyan law enforcement officer who obtained the statement from Masud.    

According to that translation, in the September 12, 2012 interview, Masud admitted to building the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 and to working with Megrahi and Fhimah – another intelligence officer who worked for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta - to execute the plot.

Masud said that the bombing operation of Pan Am Flight 103 was ordered by Libyan intelligence leadership and that after the operation, Gaddafi thanked him and other members of the team for their successful attack on the United States.

Masud stated that he worked in the Technical Department of the ESO (The Libyan Intelligence Service), which was a section that had several sub-sections. He handled Semtex explosives and built bombs on behalf of that department.

How the Lockerbie bombing operation started

Regarding the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, Masud stated that in the winter of 1988, he was summoned by a Libyan intelligence official to meet at that official’s office in Tripoli, Libya.

At the meeting, he was asked whether the “suitcases” were finished. When Masud answered in the affirmative, one of the intelligence officials ordered him to take one of the suitcases and travel with it to Malta.

Masud travelled to Malta by air the following day, carrying the equipped suitcase. He was greeted by Megrahi and Fhimah.

After approximately three or four days Megrahi and Fhimah told him to be up the following morning at 7am precisely he was to set the timer on the device in the suitcase so that the explosion would occur exactly eleven hours later. Megrahi and Fhimah also handed Masud $500 to purchase some clothes to put in the suitcase, instead of using his own clothes.

Masud did as instructed in the morning. He also took a taxi to the airport in Malta, knowing that the aircraft on which the suitcase would be placed on board would be departing after he handed the suitcase to Megrahi and Fhimah.

He described the suitcase as a medium-sized Samsonite suitcase that he used for travelling.

Masud said that he stood at a specified place near the passenger luggage check at Luqa airport. After some time passed, both Megrahi and Fhimah passed in front of him, and Fhimah went to the check-in desk near the luggage conveyor belt. Masud handed him the suitcase and it was placed on the conveyor belt. Masud then flew back to Tripoli.

The FBI court document says that the IED (bomb) suitcase, checked in as unaccompanied luggage, was initially placed aboard an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt KM180 on December 21, 1988. It was then transferred to Pan Am Flight 103A to Heathrow Airport, where it was transferred onto Pan Am Flight 103.

Malta denies connection

Officials in Malta have vehemently denied that an explosive could have been placed on board an aircraft in an unaccompanied bag at Luqa airport.

In the course of the original investigation, investigators interviewed the proprietor of Mary’s House, a shop in Tower Road, Sliema, who provided a description of a Libyan man who bought clothing consistent with many of the items of evidence that with “high probability” were inside the IED suitcase at the time of the explosion.

The Maltese government has always insisted the bomb never left from Malta and investigations carried out at the time had dismissed the theory that the bomb was inside unaccompanied luggage which was loaded onto an Air Malta flight. 

But Megrahi is still believed to have purchased clothing at Mary’s House on December 7, 1988. (That conclusion is the subject of ongoing litigation in Scotland, where Megrahi’s family is pursuing a posthumous appeal of his conviction. The US government still believes that this allegation is accurate.) 

Other clothing items in the suitcase including a shoe were likely to have been provided by Masud.

A review commission in Scotland had declared that reward money paid to Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci by the US Department of State as the key witness in the Lockerbie case, had meant that the man incarcerated for the bombing of the Pan-Am flight was denied a fair trial.

Gauci is believed to have been paid some US$3 million to keep up his version of events. He died in 2016.

Masud in his statement said that “unfortunately” the explosive device was not discovered by airport personnel. He explained that he hid the detonator and timer in a technical way that would make it difficult to be discovered, by placing it close to the metallic parts of the suitcase.

He said that he used approximately one-and-a-half kilograms of plastic Semtex, and he added that plastic explosives do not show up on the airport baggage scanner.  

The Germany theory

Though the courts decided that the bomb left from Malta, another theory was that it had been placed on board a London-bound plane at Frankfurt airport before reaching the Pam Am jet that was bound for New York.

Many still believe Iran, and not Libya, was behind the bombing - in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranair flight by an American missile in the summer of 1988, which killed 290.