Lockerbie residents register for access to accused bombers’ trial

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A total of 31 people from Lockerbie have put their names forward to register their interest for remote access to the criminal trial of alleged bomb-maker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi.

They are among 417 who responded to an FBI survey to find “living relatives” to the 1988 Lockerbie Air Disaster disaster who would want to watch and listen in to the court proceedings in Washington, USA, from May 12 next year.

Victoria Cummock – widow of 38-year-old passenger, John – who is founder and CEO of the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Legacy Foundation has also been reaching out to relatives of the 52 UK victims of the worst act of terrorism on British soil to register.

US lawmakers have passed legislation to allow the relatives to get remote access “regardless of their location” and a federal court in Washington DC is now deciding how to allow remote access to the case against Abu Agila Masud.

He was taken into US custody in 2022 and is accused of making the device that destroyed Pan Am 103 as it flew over Lockerbie on Decenber 21, 1988, at 31,000ft from Heathrow to New York, killing 270 people – which he denies.

Among those killed were Lockerbie residents: Kathleen Mary Flannigan, 41; Thomas Brown Flannigan, 44; Joanne Flannigan, 10; Dora Henrietta Henry, 56; Maurice Peter Henry, 63; Mary Lancaster, 81; Jean Aitken Murray, 82; John Somerville, 40; Rosaleen “Rosalind” Somerville, 40; Paul Somerville,13; and Lynsey Anne Somerville,10.

The FBI’s international search has identified interested people from 10 countries who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 or suffered emotional injury in its aftermath.

A total of 244 respondents came from the US and 164 from the UK – including more than 100 from Scotland – with others stepping forward from the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Canada, Mozambique, Australia and Jamaica.

It is understood that many of the Scots who responded to the survey identified themselves as being “present at or near the scene in Lockerbie when the bombing occurred or immediately thereafter” including military personnel and rescue workers who took part in the operation to recover the bodies of the victims.

A video access via a weblink or app, allowing them to follow the trial from home, has mostly been called for - although some said they would also be content with audio-only access.

It is also understood that any access would have to be strictly controlled with participants warned that recording or rebroadcasting the trial would be illegal.

Libyan Abu Agile Mohammed Masud is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and a count of destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He has already pleaded not guilty to all three charges in a federal court in Washington and awaits the trial.

A nine-month trial in 2001, with a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands, ruled that the bombing was the work of Libya’s intelligence service.

The late Abdelbasset al-Megrahi was convicted and jailed for life in Scotland.

He was freed on compassionate grounds in 2009 after falling terminally ill with cancer, returning to Libya where he died three years
later.

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