Battle Over Confession Deepens in Case of Libyan Accused in Lockerbie Bombing
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US prosecutors have defended the use of a confession allegedly made by a Libyan intelligence operative accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, insisting the statement was voluntary and reliable despite defence claims that it was coerced.
Abu Agila Mas’ud Kheir al-Marimi, 74, is accused of constructing the device that killed 270 people when the aircraft exploded over the Scottish town. Prosecutors say he freely admitted his role during questioning in a Libyan detention facility in 2012 and also confessed to involvement in other attacks on Americans, including an aborted assassination attempt on a US politician using a booby-trapped overcoat.
Mas’ud’s defence team, however, contends that the statement was extracted under duress in the chaotic aftermath of Libya’s 2011 revolution. They say masked men abducted him from his home, threatened his family, and forced him to memorise a dictated confession before being questioned the next day. His lawyers have asked a Washington court to suppress the statement, arguing it is inadmissible evidence obtained through coercion.
US Department of Justice lawyers have countered that the confession was “voluntary, reliable and accurate,” calling the defence’s version “implausible.” They maintain that the details Mas’ud provided can be corroborated by independent evidence gathered over years of investigation.
According to prosecutors, Mas’ud and other former members of Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence service were held in a militia-run facility at the time, described by a Libyan police officer as “well run” and free of abuse. The officer, who questioned Mas’ud over two days, said the Libyan appeared confident and healthy as he described building the Lockerbie bomb, as well as explosives used in a 1986 attack on a West Berlin nightclub that killed three people, including two US servicemen.
Mas’ud allegedly also recounted his role in a failed plot to kill a US Secretary of State during a funeral in Pakistan. He claimed he was meant to detonate an explosive hidden in a companion’s coat but refused when he realised the man was unaware he was carrying a bomb. Prosecutors cited this episode as evidence that Mas’ud was not easily coerced, describing him as “an intelligence operative willing to defy lethal orders in front of his superior.”
The existence of Mas’ud’s alleged confession first became public in 2020 when US authorities charged him with the Lockerbie bombing. He has been in US custody since 2022 and has pleaded not guilty. His trial at the US District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled for April.
Scottish investigators reportedly received a copy of the confession in 2017, five years after it was recorded. Prosecutors say the Libyan officer who took the statement kept it hidden at home for three years due to the instability in post-revolution Libya, later handing it to government officials who shared it with international authorities.
A pretrial hearing will determine whether Mas’ud’s alleged confession can be admitted as evidence. Prosecutors have urged the court not to exclude what they call “highly relevant evidence” linking him to “two major terrorist attacks against Americans.”
The outcome will shape one of the most consequential terrorism trials in recent years — and may determine whether the Lockerbie case finally reaches its judicial conclusion more than three decades after the bombing.
