Libyan writer arrested over Lockerbie bombing documents

Libyan writer and politician Samir Shegwara has been arrested on national security charges after publishing documents that allegedly link Libya’s intelligence agency to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, according to the BBC.

Shegwara, who is also the mayor of Hay al Andalous in Tripoli, was reportedly detained on March 20, just two days after the BBC reported that the documents could serve as evidence in the case against Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud.

Masud was seized from his Tripoli home by an armed militia in 2022 and later taken into U.S. custody. He is currently detained in Washington, D.C., accused of constructing the bomb that brought down Flight 103. His trial, originally scheduled for May 12, has been postponed at the request of both the prosecution and defense.

Shegwara has publicly discussed the documents since 2018, stating they were recovered from the archives of Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The files, published this January in a book co-authored with French journalists Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille, also implicate Libyan agents in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner.

Shegwara faces charges for possessing "classified security documents without legal justification." His arrest has sparked international criticism, with his publishers calling for the charges to be dropped. Though provisionally released on April 1, he remains at risk of re-arrest and prosecution.