US prosecutors look set to bring new charges against a fresh suspect for the Lockerbie bombing.
Reports suggest that American authorities are looking to extradite Libyan national Abu Agila Mohammad Masud.
They are said to suspect him of making the bomb that detonated on board Pan Am Flight 103 over the town in 1988.
The news comes ahead of the 32nd anniversary of the atrocity - which killed 270 - on December 21.
Officials in Washington say the terror suspect was the top bomb-maker on deposed leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s books.
He is being held by Libyan authorities as the US Justice Department look to secure his extradition to face a federal court.
If the move is successful, it will mark the first trial in America related to the bombing - which saw the deaths of 190 US citizens aboard - as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie’s Sherwood Crescent, who perished when parts of the Boeing 747 exploded and the fuselage crashed to the ground.
Former Libyan secret service agent Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was convicted of carrying out the bombing in 2001, following a revolutionary trial by a Scottish Court convened in the Netherlands.
He was released in 2009 from Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison on compassionate grounds after a prostate cancer diagnosis, having always protested his innocence.
An appeal on behalf of his family is lodged with the Scottish courts.
The Libyan government later agreed to pay out more than one billion US dollars to compensate the families of victims of the doomed Clipper Maid of the Seas.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US case against Masud is based largely on a confession he gave to Libyan authorities in 2012, which was handed to Scottish officials in 2017.
US authorities have not publicly commented on the developments.
