Lockerbie bombing suspect says confession was coerced, defense seeks suppression
Lawyers for Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi argue abduction, incommunicado detention and threats tainted his statements as U.S. trial looms
The Libyan man accused of building the explosive that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 says he was forced into making a false confession. Abu Agil Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, now 74, is due to stand trial in the United States next year on charges tied to the bombing that killed 270 people.
Masud was extradited to the United States in 2022 after allegedly admitting to constructing the explosive; details of what prosecutors say he confessed to were publicly revealed five years earlier when the Justice Department announced charges against him.
Defense lawyers filed a motion this week to suppress the statements, arguing the circumstances of his arrest and detention in Libya were incommunicado and conducted under a system with documented human rights abuses, making the confession inadmissible.
They say Masud was abducted by armed men, separated from his family, and held in an unofficial prison facility after Libya's revolution; He feared for the safety of his six children and began memorizing the content of a piece of paper after being told to answer questions about Lockerbie using that text.
According to the filing, three men in civilian clothes wearing face coverings entered a small room where he was kept, unarmed and unnamed; Masud could not identify them and did not know whether they were police, soldiers, or other actors, but believed they were revolutionary authorities.
The defense says the men gave him a single page with an order to confess to Lockerbie and another attack, and instructed him to respond only with information from that page; they alleged they threatened him and his family if he did not comply, and said the page would be taken away later without explanation.
They argue that such coercive pressure, combined with the environment described as post-revolution Libya, taints any statements obtained.
Masud's case follows the 1988 attack in which 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground in Dumfries, Scotland, were killed when the Boeing 747 crashed.
Another Libyan linked to the bombing, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was convicted by a Scottish court in 2001; He was terminally ill and released on compassionate grounds in 2009, and later died.
Prosecutors also say genetic analysis from wreckage remnants, including the suitcase lining and an umbrella recovered from the debris, may be used to link the evidence to Masud, as his trial in the United States approaches next year.
Officials say the Lockerbie case remains Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, and the trial is expected to shed further light on the decades-long investigation.