The charges were announced on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing and in the final news conference of Attorney General William Barr’s tenure, underscoring his personal attachment to a case that unfolded during his first stint at the Justice Department. He had announced an earlier set of charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials in his capacity as acting attorney general nearly 30 years ago, vowing that the investigation would continue.
A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Masud, an explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement several years earlier after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
In that interview, U.S. officials said, Masud admitted building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with the two other defendants to carry it out. He also revealed that he had been summoned by a Libyan intelligence official to a meeting in Tripoli and asked whether the “suitcases” were finished.
While Masud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the U.S. in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to stand trial in an American courtroom.