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Libyan Abu Agila Mohammad Masud has been indicted in a US court in connection with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.
The intelligence official faces two criminal charges for the attack, which occurred 32 years ago today.
In 2001, another Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted of the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 after it blew up over the Scottish city of Lockerbie.
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Masud is the third person accused of the attack
He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released on humanitarian grounds in 2009 due to suffering from prostate cancer. Later he died in Tripoli.
Most of the victims on the London to New York flight were US citizens.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mohammad Masud was being held in Libya and that outgoing US Attorney General William Barr was seeking his extradition to the United States for trial.
That development received a cautious welcome from Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.
He had told Sky News: “I am in favor of having whatever you have to tell us be examined in court, of course I am.”
“The more people see the materials that we have available, the better because, in reality, there are only two things that we look for.
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Dr. Jim Swire’s daughter died in the Lockerbie attack
“One is the question of why those lives were not protected in light of all the warnings and the second is: what our government and the US government really know about who is responsible for murdering them.”
The case is likely to be of particular importance to Barr, as it is the second time he has overseen charges related to the attack.
He held the same job when the Justice Department charged Megrahi and a second Libyan, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, with building a plastic bomb with a timer before hiding it inside a suitcase and placing it on an Air Malta flight.
The suitcase was then transferred to Pan Am Flight 103.
At the time the indictment was released in 1991, Barr said: “We will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice. We have no higher priority.”
In 1992, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions for arms sales and air travel against Libya to force Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the then leader of the country, to hand over the two suspects.
Fhimah was acquitted, but Megrahi was imprisoned for life with a minimum period of 27 years.
The sanctions were later lifted after Libya agreed to a $ 2.7 billion (£ 1.95 billion) compensation deal with the families of the victims.
