Lockerbie bombing accused says he was forced into false confession | UK News

The Libyan accused of building the bomb that brought down an American airliner over Lockerbie 36 years ago has claimed he was forced into making a false confession.

Abu Agila Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, has said he was in custody in Libya when three masked men ordered him to memorise information about the destruction of Pan Am 103 and another terror attack.

Referred to as Mas’ud by prosecutors, he said he repeated what he had learned to a Libyan official, under duress, after the men threatened his family.

Masud’s lawyers have asked a federal court in Washington to rule the alleged confession inadmissible in advance of his trial in April next year.

Details of the alleged confession were first made public five years ago after the US department of justice announced it was charging Mas’ud over the atrocity which claimed the lives of 270 people on 21 December 1988.

A criminal complaint summary compiled by the FBI claimed he had admitted playing a key role in the attack when he was in detention in 2012, following the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime the previous year.

The bureau said Mas’ud had talked of being involved in the plot along with other members of the Libyan intelligence service.

Afterwards, he was said to have been congratulated in person by the Libyan dictator, who had told him he had performed “a great national duty” against the Americans.

Of the 259 passengers and crew who died on board the airliner, 190 were from the United States, where the Mas’ud case will be tried.

The only Lockerbie trial so far took place between May 2000 and January 2001, when three Scottish judges convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdulbasset al-Megrahi of playing a key role in the plot.

Megrahi was jailed for life but released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died three years later at home in Tripoli.

With just seven months to go until the scheduled start of Mas’ud’s trial, public defenders acting on his behalf have lodged a motion with the district court asking a judge to rule that his confession should not be allowed as evidence.

The Libyan has pled not guilty to the charges against him. But the “motion to suppress” reveals for the first time his version of what led to the alleged jailhouse confession.

Setting the scene, the motion quotes a US Department of State report which said Gaddafi’s regime had controlled Libya through extrajudicial killings and intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention.

The document says that after the revolution there was a climate of anger and retaliation against those associated or thought to be associated with Gaddafi.

Contemporary reports by US government officials recount more incidents of “arbitrary and unlawful killings, kidnappings, torture and other cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The defence lawyers say: “Just as… a black man accused of killing a white man in Jim Crow-era Arkansas would fear mob violence… so would a Libyan who allegedly worked for Gaddafi have feared retaliation against himself and his family in post-revolution Libya.”

It was against that background, according to Mas’ud, that he was abducted from his home by armed men, separated from his family and his medication, held incommunicado in an unofficial prison facility and denied procedural rights.

He says he saw bodies lying in the streets when he was being driven to the prison and while in custody, and encountered other inmates who had been beaten and abused.

Mas’ud has told his legal team that he was alone in a small room when three men in civilian clothes came in. They were unarmed but wearing face coverings and did not identify themselves.

He says he was certain the men, who handed him the piece of paper, were anti-Gadaffi revolutionaries.

“The single, handwritten sheet began with an order that Mr Al-Marimi confess to the Lockerbie incident, as well as another terrorist attack,” his defence lawyers claim.

The men told him to read over the details and to repeat what it said when he was questioned by someone else the next day.

“They told him he had to answer the questions with what was on the paper, otherwise bad things would happen to him or his family.

“Mr Al-Marimi felt he had no choice but to comply. He had ample reason to fear for himself; before his seizure, he had personally witnessed beatings in others prisons.

“But he was more afraid for his family. He had six children and felt they still had lives left to live. If he resisted, his children could be assaulted or killed. He personally knew about a friend’s daughter who had been shot before his abduction.”

The lawyers say a frightened Mas’ud did as he was told when he was questioned by another man the next evening.

They say that – when presented with similar evidence of coercion – American courts have found custodial statements involuntary and inadmissible under the fifth amendment of the US constitution, whether they were made in the United States or abroad.

The defence has asked the court to order the suppression of the alleged statements and has requested a hearing so the issue can be decided.

The FBI has said that the Libyan official who noted Mas’ud’s confession in 2012 is prepared to give evidence at his trial.

Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice have not yet responded to the claims made on Mas’ud’s behalf.