Arrest of accused Lockerbie bomb-maker evokes pain of son's loss, mom says

An announcement Sunday that a Libyan man was in U.S. custody, accused of making the bomb that killed hundreds aboard a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, pleased Montauk resident Suse Lowenstein, whose son Alex was on the plane.

Even so, she said, the loss of a child, “never really goes away."

Lowenstein, the creator of sculptures outside her home as a testament to grief and loss, said the arrest of alleged bomb-maker Abu Agila Masud also brought back a painful mix of memories and emotions.

“It is very upsetting, deep down, because it makes it so real again,” she told Newsday on Sunday of her reaction to hearing Masud was in custody.

“This was actually the guy who built the device to kill my boy," said Lowenstein, 78.

A spokesman for the Scottish Crown Office said Scottish prosecutors and police, working alongside colleagues from the United States and United Kingdom, "will continue to pursue this investigation." The office said it would not comment further, citing the ongoing investigation. 

The Justice Department in 2020 charged Masud with helping make the bomb. Attorney General William P. Barr said at the time that the Dec. 21, 1988 bombing of the Pan Am Boeing 747 was ordered by the leadership of Libyan intelligence and that Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's leader at the time, personally thanked Masud for his work. The agency described the alleged bomb-maker as a former Libyan intelligence operative.

It was not clear Sunday how Masud was taken into U.S. custody. He would be the first to appear in an American courtroom for prosecution of the attack.

Lowenstein’s son Alex, was a 21-year-old Syracuse University student aboard Pam Am Flight 103 when it exploded less than half an hour after the jet departed London’s Heathrow airport, bound for New York. The bombing killed all 259 passengers and crew on the plane along with 11 people on the ground.

Alex Lowenstein had been among 35 Syracuse University students traveling home after a semester abroad, according a digital archive about the bombing and its victims by the university. An English major, he had hoped to pursue a degree in clinical psychology so he could work in a psychiatric clinic after graduating.

"Alexander was very special. His ability to fully enjoy life; to make us laugh; to draw his peers to him; to make us love him," Suse Lowenstein and her husband, Peter Lowenstein wrote of their son in the online memorial.

Peter Lowenstein died in 2018.

Even with Masud in the hands of U.S., authorities, Suse Lowenstein said she remains cynical about ever seeing justice for her son and the other victims of the bombing nearly 34 years ago.

In 1991, the U.S. charged two Libyan intelligence officers with planting the bomb aboard the jet. But the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, refused to turn them over. After long negotiations, Libya agreed in 1999 to surrender them for prosecution by a panel of Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands.

One of the men, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, was convicted and given a life sentence. The other, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty. Scottish officials released al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in Libya in 2012.

“I feel very glad that they got him [Masud], don't get me wrong,” Lowenstein said. “It's just I take it with a grain of salt because we've been there before.”

Lowenstein’s “Dark Elegy” sculpture depicts 76 naked, wailing mothers and widows in the instant they learned their loved one was killed in the bombing. The piece is on display at her Montauk home and is open to the public daily.

Lowenstein said she plans to donate the exhibit to a foundation that could then raise funds to cast the synthetic stone sculptures in bronze.

“The processing of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi into U.S. custody shows that we will never rest in punishing those who seek to harm our country,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. “I want to thank our intelligence community and the intelligence community in Scotland for bringing us one step closer to justice.”

With AP and Jean-Paul Salamanca

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.