Mother of local victim killed in Lockerbie bombing speaks out after arrest made over 30 years later

PITTSBURGH — A local woman says she’s grateful for the arrest of a man accused of building the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

Iva Saraceni’s daughter Elyse was a student at Seton Hill and was flying home for the holidays after studying abroad at London’s Royal Academy of Music. She was one of 190 Americans killed in the bombing.

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud is in FBI custody two years after it was announced he’d face charges in the United States. Mas’ud is a Libyan intelligence operative.

He’s not the first person arrested in relation to the bombing. Another man was convicted in 2001 but died of cancer in 2012. Still, another was arrested and acquitted.

“We’re grateful certainly to the Department of Justice and the Lockerbie Appeal Team who really have persisted for 35 years in pursuing the people who murdered our beautiful, brilliant children,” Saraceni said.

There is a memorial site for the victims of the bombing. You can find it here: https://www.pa103ll.org/living-memorial/elyse-saraceni

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