Libya has indicated it would consider extraditing the man charged in the US with making the Lockerbie bomb that killed 270 people.

       Abu Agila Masud is accused of packing explosives into a suitcase that downed Pan Am Flight 103, in charges brought by the US last year. Most of the passengers on the flight in 1988 were Americans.

       Masud, who is the third alleged conspirator charged over the bombing, is being held by the Libyan authorities.

       On Wednesday, Libya’s foreign minister, Najla El-Mangoush, said “positive outcomes are coming” in discussions with the US to have Masud extradited to face trial.

       Asked whether extradition was possible, she told the BBC: “Well, I don’t know, but I think we as a government, we are very open in terms of collaboration on this matter.

       “We understand the pain and the sadness of the families but we also have to respect the laws.”

       She added that the issue was progressing.

       An FBI affidavit alleges that Masud confessed his crime in an interview with the Libyan authorities in 2012, after he was jailed in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s fall from power.

       Masud said he put one-and-a-half kilograms of the plastic explosive Semtex with a timer in a Samsonite suitcase on a flight in Malta which eventually was moved on to Pan Am Flight 103, according to the affidavit.

       He is also alleged to have said he was working on the orders of the External Security Organisation, the Libyan intelligence service at the time.

       Two other conspirators, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged in 1991.

       Megrahi was convicted by Scottish judges in 2001. He eventually was released from prison in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Fhimah was acquitted.

       Relations between the US and Libya have thawed since Gadaffi’s fall, leading to the optimism on both sides that an agreement can be reached over Masud’s extradition.