Re: Suspected Lockerbie Bomb Maker’s Capture

At 18:25 on the evening of 21 December 1988, the Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Pan Am Boeing 747-121 registered N739PA and acting as Pan Am flight 103 departed London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) bound for New York (JFK). Thirty-seven-minutes later, while northwest-bound at FL310, Pan Am 103’s single radar echo fragmented into five distinctive returns. A terrorist bomb had detonated. None of the 259 souls aboard the Clipper Maid of the Seas survived the atrocity.

On 15 December 2022, four organizations representing the vestiges of Pan Am Airlines—the Pan Am Historical Foundation, the Pan Am Museum Foundation, World Wings International, and the Clipper Pioneers—released the following joint statement pertaining to the 11 December capture of Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, the Libyan man charged in the U.S. with having built the explosive device that brought down Pan Am flight 103.

“It will be 34 years next week since the tragic and senseless bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. We remember all the victims: the passengers, the Pan Am crew, and those killed on the ground. Our deepest condolences to the families of those who were lost.

“That day forever changed the Pan Am family and still brings the deepest sadness and sorrow in reflection. The United States was deliberately attacked by terrorists and our beloved airline was the target. In the aftermath of this horrible terrorist attack, we saw the sunlight of what is good in humanity as we witnessed the neighbors and citizens of Lockerbie coming together to help all involved, especially the families of the victims.

“This past Sunday, we were given some solace knowing that American justice may finally be served with the arrest and extradition of the suspect in the bombing of Pan Am 103, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi (Mas’ud). We thank the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the wider intelligence community for their decades-long dedication to bringing those responsible to justice. They have never forgotten about Pan Am Flight 103 and we are forever grateful.”

Established in 1992 by a group of former Pan Am employees, the Pan Am Historical Foundation honors, preserves, and promotes the legacy of Pan Am by providing and promulgating a comprehensive account of the airline’s unique historic contributions to aviation.

Opened in 2016, the Pan Am Museum educates, celebrates, and endeavors to inspire present and future generations by preserving historical stories of Pan American World Airways.

Founded in 1959, World Wings International is a philanthropic organization of former Pan Am flight attendants that seeks to contemporaneously maintain the airline’s long tradition of global humanitarian assistance and safeguard Pan Am’s place in aviation history.

Clipper Pioneers is an organization of retired Pan Am pilots and crew.

“How can it fail to smash and shatter the petty provincialism and narrow nationalism ... making of this world a tragic mosaic of hostility and hate? How can this fabulous new force in the sky fail to serve the hope of the world and the peace of the world?”  —Juan Trippe Founder of Pan American World Airways

FMI: www.panam.org