Washington (AFP) - The Libyan accused of making the bomb used to blow up a US airliner over Scotland in 1988, in an operation that killed 270 people, has arrived in the United States and will appear in court on Monday, Justice Department officials said.

The United States brought charges against Abu Ageila Muhammad Masoud two years ago in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, in which most of the victims were Americans.

After his arrival in the United States, he was transferred to a Department of Justice facility in Alexandria, Virginia, to complete the initial stages of processing his case.

On Monday afternoon at 13:00 (18:00 GMT), he will appear in federal court in Washington for a first hearing.
And on Sunday, Scottish prosecutors announced that he was being held by the US authorities, but without giving details of how he was transferred from Libya.

Massoud was previously detained in Libya on suspicion of his involvement in the 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub.

One person has so far been convicted of the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 on December 21, 1988, in the bloodiest terrorist attack on British soil.

The plane, which was bound for New York, exploded 38 minutes after taking off from London, causing its structure to fall in the town of Lockerbie, while the wreckage was scattered over a wide area.

The bombing killed 259 people, including 190 Americans on board the flight, in addition to 11 people on the ground.
Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi spent seven years in a Scottish prison after being convicted in this case in 2001, and died in Libya in 2012. Al-Megrahi has always pleaded not guilty.