Lockerbie bombing suspect appears in US court
Masud is alleged to have made the device that was used in the Lockerbie bombing.
A Libyan man has appeared in a US court accused of building the device used in the Lockerbie bombing.
The US Department of Justice claims Abu Agila Mohammed Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, referred to as Masud, admitted taking part in the terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.
He appeared before judge Dabney L Friedrich at the District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday, and relatives of the victims and Scottish law enforcement who assisted in the investigation were present.
Masud is alleged to have made the confession to Scottish investigators when questioned at a Libyan detention facility in 2012.
He now claims the confession is false and was made under duress after three masked men threatened him and his family.
Masud has tried to get the confession ruled inadmissible before his trial in Washington DC later this year, but the US Government said the confession was made freely and the account provided was highly-detailed and corroborated other evidence.
The Scottish investigators handed a copy of the alleged confession to the FBI in the US in 2017 and the document was made public in 2020.
Masud is said to have confessed to taking a bomb in a suitcase from Libya to Malta in December 1988 under the orders of the Libyan intelligence service. According to the confession, he set the bomb timer to explode 11 hours later and bought clothes to pack the suitcase that held the device.
He is then said to have met Adulbasset Al Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of bombing the plane over Lockerbie, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a former Libyan Arab Airline official.
It is said Masud handed the suitcase to Fhimah at Luqa Airport in Malta, who then placed it on a conveyer belt where it was tagged to be flown to the US.
The device then exploded when Pan Am Flight 103 flew from London Heathrow to New York, killing all 259 people on board and 11 residents of the town in southern Scotland.
The hearing at the US court is expected to last two days and the judge is expected to issue a decision at a later date.
Masud was initially due to go on trial in Washington on May 12, but the district court judge agreed to a postponement after submissions from both the prosecution and defence.
Lawyers raised issues over the case’s complexity and the time needed to prepare for pretrial proceedings and the trial itself.
The lawyers also referred to the issue of “voluminous discovery, including evidence located in other countries”.
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