34 years after the deadly Lockerbie attack on a plane over Scotland, a Libyan man has been taken into US custody who is said to have built the bomb used at the time. A spokesman for the Scottish Public Prosecutor's Office said the victims' families had been informed of this, according to the PA news agency and the BBC on Sunday.

A spokesman for the US Department of Justice confirmed the detention to the dpa in Washington. The alleged bomb maker is expected before a district court in Washington. Details would be communicated.

On December 21, 1988, terrorists blew up a Pan Am passenger plane en route from London to New York over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. 270 people died, including 11 local residents who were killed by falling debris.

The background to the terrorist attack was never fully clarified. The British authorities assume that a Libyan terrorist command carried out the assassination. Only one suspect, the Libyan ex-secret service officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 for mass murder. In 2009, however, he was released from custody in Scotland for health reasons and died in Tripoli in 2012. He had always maintained his innocence.

In 2020, the suspect, now in US custody, was accused by then US Attorney General William Barr of involvement in the attack, according to the PA. At that time he is said to have been in custody in Libya.