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A U.S. judge has ruled that a purported confession by Abu Agila Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, the Libyan man accused of constructing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie nearly four decades ago, can be admitted as evidence at his upcoming trial. Mas’ud, who is 74 years old, contends that three masked individuals coerced him into delivering a false confession while he was detained in Libya.
In the lead-up to his trial scheduled for April next year, Mas’ud’s defense team filed a request with a federal court in Washington to exclude the alleged confession, arguing that it is not the original document and should therefore be deemed inadmissible. However, Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected this motion, allowing prosecutors to present the confession during the judicial proceedings. During the court session, Mas’ud appeared dressed in a green prison jumpsuit and communicated through an interpreter.
Mas’ud denies any involvement in assembling or priming the explosive device responsible for the attack on December 21, 1988, which caused the deaths of 270 individuals aboard the aircraft. He claims that the masked men forced him to memorize certain details about the Lockerbie bombing and another terrorist incident. Under the threat of harm to his family, he alleges he recited this information to a Libyan official. Furthermore, Mas’ud has accused authorities of unlawfully removing him from Libya to stand trial in the United States in what he describes as a “cloak and dagger operation” carried out covertly at night.
Information about Mas’ud’s alleged confession first came to light five years ago following a U.S. Department of Justice announcement charging him in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. According to an FBI summary of the criminal complaint, Mas’ud reportedly admitted his involvement while detained in 2012 after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi’s government. The FBI has indicated that the Libyan official who recorded the confession is willing to testify at the trial. Of the 270 victims, 259 were passengers and crew members on the flight, with 190 from the United States—the country where the trial is taking place. The only prior legal case related to the bombing resulted in the conviction of Libyan intelligence agent Abdulbasset al-Megrahi by a Scottish court in 2001. Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to terminal illness and passed away three years later in Tripoli
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