On 13 December, The New York Times’ Baghdad bureau chief Jane Arraf published an article entitled ‘In Libya, Mystery Shrouds Handover of Lockerbie Suspect to US’. In the article, Arraf assesses the mystery surrounding Abu Agila Masud’s handover to the US and how some in Libya view it as ‘an abduction rather than an extradition’. Arraf explains that Masud is a former intelligence officer under Qadhafi’s regime who US prosecutors say delivered the bomb that downed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie. According to the article, Masud completed a 10-year prison sentence in Libya for ‘working against the revolution’ that toppled Qadhafi. However, Arraf writes that one month ago Masud’s family reported that he was abducted from his home in Tripoli. She says that ‘It was not immediately clear who had handled [Masud] over’ to the US, where he is currently awaiting trial in Washington, DC. Arraf brings up two possibilities: that a militia may have turned Masud over, or that the Government of National Unity (GNU) may have done so to ‘shore up American support’.
The article further explores how ongoing political divisions are playing out through responses to Masud’s handover. Arraf quotes Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya analyst and fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), who states that backlash from the handover is resultant of a perception that it has empowered militias and given them legitimacy to torture and arrest people without due process. According to Harchaoui, Masud may have first been handed over to the Joint Operations Force who he says are currently loyal to the GNU. Masud says that the House of Representatives (HoR) has since called Masud’s handover ‘high treason’ and is asking for ‘the public prosecutor [to] take legal action’ over his capture.
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