Lockerbie bombing suspect pleads not guilty in US court

The US alleges Abu Agila Masud made the bomb that downed Pan Am flight 103

The man accused of building the explosive used in the Lockerbie bombing has pleaded not guilty in a US court.

Abu Agila Masud is alleged to have been involved in downing Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town in 1988 - killing 270 people.

He is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and a count of destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

The Libyan pleaded not guilty to all three in a federal court in Washington.

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Each of the charges Mr Masud faces are punishable by a sentence of up to life imprisonment, the death penalty or a fine of up to $250,000 (£206,000).

A previous hearing in December heard that Mr Masud will not face the death penalty because the bombing occurred before the specific charges which he faces carried a possible penalty of capital punishment.

A further hearing was fixed for later in February for Judge Moxila Upadhyaya to hear arguments on whether Mr Masud should be detained or released for trial.

In December, US officials announced that Mr Masud, who allegedly worked as an intelligence agent for the country's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, had been taken into custody.

It came two years after it emerged he had been charged in connection with the explosion.

A total of 270 people were killed in the Lockerbie bombing

In 2020, he was charged by US Attorney General William Barr with being the third person involved in the terrorist attack.

The Lockerbie bombing remains Britain's deadliest terrorist attack.

All 259 people on board the jumbo jet bound to New York from London on December 21, 1988, were killed.

Another 11 people were killed in Lockerbie when wreckage destroyed their homes.

In 2001 Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing the flight after standing trial at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands.

He was the only man to be convicted over the attack.

Megrahi was jailed for life but was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after being diagnosed with cancer. He died in Libya in 2012.