Alleged Lockerbie Bomber’s Court Appearance Brings to Mind Disaster’s Pasadena Victim

On December 21, 1988, a Pan Am flight that had just taken off from London on the way to New York exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 258 people on board – including 37-year-old Jane Ann Morgan, a Pasadena woman who was working for an American law firm in London and was coming home for the holidays.

Morgan was one of 11 Californians who were killed in the disaster. Her family said Morgan had booked an earlier flight on TWA but had to cancel so she could finish the day’s business.

That Christmas in 1988, Morgan’s family in Pasadena had planned a homecoming for the lawyer who had not been able to be home the previous Christmas.

Instead, it became a memorial service for her, held at the Polytechnic School, which Morgan attended as a child.

Morgan had moved from New York to London about four months earlier to accept a job with the Albert Partnership law firm. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English literature and earned a law degree from Duke University and specialiozed in entertainment law, according to media reports published shortly after her death.

Investigators later determined the explosion that took down Flight 103 was caused by a bomb on board, planted by terrorists who had links to Muammar Ghaddafi.

On Monday, the third suspect in the bombing faced U.S. federal court for the first time.

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi had been taken into U.S. custody two years after the he was formally charged in connnection with the bombing of Flight 103. He was the first defendant to appear in an American courtroom for prosecution.

The Justice Department announced on Sunday that Mas’ud had been taken into U.S. custody, two years after it revealed that it had charged him in connection with the explosion. His extradition sets the stage for what is seen to be one of the Justice Department’s more significant terrorism prosecutions in recent memory.

“Although nearly 34 years have passed since the defendant’s actions, countless families have never fully recovered,” Assistant US Attorney Erik Kenerson said during a court proceeding Monday. Relatives of the victims who died in the crash were in attendance.

Mas’ud faces two different criminal charges, including destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. Prosecutors said they will not pursue death penalty for the former Libyan intelligence officer because while the charges Mas’ud faces now are punishable by death, they were not eligible for the death penalty in 1988. He could be sentenced to life in prison.