🔗 Share this article

US legal authorities have stated that a Libyan man willingly confessed to participating in terrorist acts targeting US citizens, including the 1988's Lockerbie attack and an aborted conspiracy to assassinate a US politician using a explosive-laden overcoat.

Admission Particulars

Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi is alleged to have admitted his role in the deaths of 270 individuals when the aircraft was destroyed over the Scotland's town of Lockerbie, during questioning in a Libya's detention facility in the year 2012.

Known as the suspect, the senior individual has asserted that three hooded persons compelled him to make the confession after threatening him and his relatives.

His legal representatives are working to stop it from being utilized as testimony in his legal proceedings in DC in the coming year.

Judicial Dispute

In response, attorneys from the American justice department have stated they can establish in court that the confession was "unforced, credible and truthful."

The presence of Mas'ud's claimed confession was first made public in 2020, when the US announced it was charging him with building and preparing the bomb employed on Flight 103.

Defense Claims

The father-of-six is charged of being a former official in Libyan intelligence service and has been in US confinement since recent years.

He has pleaded not responsible to the charges and is scheduled to stand trial at the District Court for the District of Columbia in spring.

The defendant's legal team are trying to prevent the trial from hearing about the statement and have presented a request asking for it to be excluded.

They argue it was obtained under pressure following the uprising which overthrew the former dictator in 2011.

Claimed Pressure

They claim previous personnel of the dictator's government were being targeted with wrongful deaths, abductions and mistreatment when Mas'ud was taken from his dwelling by weapon-carrying persons the subsequent year.

He was taken to an unofficial detention center where other prisoners were purportedly beaten and mistreated and was by himself in a small space when three masked persons handed him a solitary sheet of documentation.

His attorneys claimed its handwritten details commenced with an order that he was to confess to the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing and another terror attack.

Significant Terrorist Attacks

The defendant states he was instructed to memorise what it stated about the incidents and recite it when he was interviewed by someone else the next time.

Being concerned for his security and that of his children, he said he felt he had no option but to obey.

In their response to the legal team's request, attorneys from the American justice department have declared the tribunal was being requested to withhold "highly relevant testimony" of Mas'ud's guilt in "several major terrorist incidents against US citizens."

Government Responses

They say the suspect's story of events is unconvincing and untrue, and argue that the information of the confession can be corroborated by credible separate evidence gathered over several decades.

The government attorneys say Mas'ud and fellow former personnel of the dictator's secret service were held in a secret detention facility operated by a armed group when they were interrogated by an knowledgeable Libya's law enforcement official.

They argue that in the chaos of the post-uprising period, the center was "the protected environment" for the suspect and the additional operatives, accounting for the conflict and opposition feeling dominant at the moment.

Questioning Particulars

Based to the police officer who interrogated Mas'ud, the center was "efficiently operated", the prisoners were not restrained and there were no evidence of abuse or coercion.

The official has claimed that over two days, a self-assured and healthy defendant detailed his involvement in the bombings of the aircraft.

The FBI has also claimed he had admitted creating a bomb which went off in a German venue in the mid-1980s, causing the deaths of three persons, comprising multiple US servicemen, and harming many additional.

Further Claims

He is also alleged to have detailed his involvement in an plot on the life of an unidentified US Secretary of State at a official ceremony in the Asian country.

Mas'ud is reported to have stated that a person accompanying the American politician was wearing a explosive-laden coat.

It was the suspect's task to trigger the explosive but he chose not to proceed after finding out that the individual carrying the coat did not realize he was on a deadly operation.

He opted "not to push the device" despite his supervisor in the secret service being alongside at the moment and asking what was {going on|happening|occurring