Family members of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people, have welcomed the identification of two Libyans as new suspects in the case, the BBC reported.
The Scottish Crown Office said on Thursday that Scotland's Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch have agreed that there is a legal basis "to entitle Scottish and U.S. investigators to treat two Libyans as suspects" in the investigation, which has been ongoing for more than 25 years.
The Crown Office did not identify the suspects, however the BBC reported that it understands them to be Mohammed Abouajela Masud—who is reportedly imprisoned in Libya for bomb-making—and Abdullah al-Senussi, the brother-in-law of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband died in the attack, told the BBC that she was "surprised, delighted and really gratified" by the naming of two new suspects. However, Jim Swire whose daughter died in the tragedy, said any prosecution of the two new suspects would "need to be supported by very much better evidence" than that used to convict Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the sole person convicted in relation to the disaster.
Mulholland has issued a letter of request to the Libyan Attorney General in Tripoli to ask for assistance in allowing Scottish and U.S. legal officials to interview the two suspects. However, the situation is complicated by the civil strife in Libya. The country has an internationally-recognized government in the eastern city of Tobruk and an Islamist-backed rival government in Tripoli.
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded above Lockerbie in southern Scotland, killing all of the 259 people on board along with 11 people on the ground. The only person convicted in relation to the bombing was al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of murder in 2001.
Al-Megrahi served eight years of a life sentence in a Scottish prison before being released in August 2009 on compassionate grounds. He died in Tripoli in 2012. Relatives of some of the Lockerbie bombing victims have protested that al-Megrahi's conviction was a miscarriage of justice. Al-Megrahi consistently protested his innocence, and in 2007 a £1.1 million ($1.7 million) review of the case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
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Conor is a staff writer for Newsweek covering Africa, with a focus on Nigeria, security and conflict.
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