US Prosecuting Attorneys Assert Libyan National Voluntarily Admitted to Lockerbie Bombing
US legal authorities have claimed that a Libyan national individual freely confessed to participating in operations directed at US citizens, encompassing the 1988's Lockerbie bombing and an aborted attempt to kill a American politician using a booby-trapped overcoat.
Statement Particulars
Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi is said to have acknowledged his involvement in the deaths of 270 victims when Pan Am 103 was exploded over the Scotland's area of the region, during interrogation in a Libyan detention facility in the year 2012.
Identified as the defendant, the elderly man has asserted that several hooded persons pressured him to deliver the statement after threatening him and his relatives.
His attorneys are working to block it from being utilized as testimony in his legal proceedings in Washington in the coming year.
Courtroom Dispute
In reply, lawyers from the American justice department have stated they can establish in legal proceedings that the confession was "unforced, trustworthy and truthful."
The availability of the suspect's claimed confession was initially made public in 2020, when the United States stated it was indicting him with constructing and preparing the bomb utilized on the aircraft.
Legal Team Allegations
The family man is alleged of being a former high-ranking officer in Libya's intelligence service and has been in US confinement since 2022.
He has pleaded innocent to the allegations and is due to stand trial at the District Court for the the capital in the coming months.
Mas'ud's lawyers are trying to stop the court from hearing about the admission and have filed a request asking for it to be withheld.
They assert it was secured under pressure following the uprising which overthrew Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.
Claimed Intimidation
They assert former personnel of the leader's government were being targeted with wrongful killings, seizures and abuse when the suspect was abducted from his residence by armed men the following period.
He was taken to an informal holding location where other prisoners were allegedly abused and abused and was by himself in a cramped space when multiple masked persons gave him a solitary sheet of paper.
His legal representatives said its handwritten details started with an instruction that he was to acknowledge to the Pan Am Flight 103 incident and a separate terrorist incident.
Major Terror Attacks
The suspect claims he was ordered to learn what it said about the events and recite it when he was questioned by a different individual the following day.
Worrying for his safety and that of his children, he claimed he felt he had no alternative but to obey.
In their response to the defense's motion, legal counsel from the US Department of Justice have declared the judge was being petitioned to withhold "very significant proof" of the defendant's responsibility in "multiple significant extremist incidents against American people."
Authorities Responses
They say Mas'ud's version of events is unconvincing and untrue, and assert that the contents of the statement can be verified by credible external evidence gathered over several years.
The government attorneys claim the suspect and additional previous members of the former leader's intelligence service were held in a covert detention facility managed by a militia when they were interrogated by an knowledgeable Libyan investigator.
They assert that in the disorder of the aftermath era, the center was "the safest environment" for Mas'ud and the other agents, accounting for the violence and resistance attitude prevailing at the period.
Investigation Details
Based to the police officer who interviewed Mas'ud, the facility was "properly managed", the inmates were not bound and there were no signs of abuse or coercion.
The investigator has stated that over multiple sessions, a composed and healthy suspect described his participation in the attacks of the aircraft.
The federal authorities has also stated he had acknowledged constructing a bomb which went off in a West Berlin nightclub in the mid-1980s, killing multiple individuals, encompassing several American servicemen, and injuring numerous additional.
Additional Claims
He is also said to have described his role in an plot on the life of an unidentified US foreign minister at a public event in Pakistan.
The suspect is said to have stated that an individual accompanying the US politician was wearing a rigged overcoat.
It was the suspect's task to activate the bomb but he opted not to proceed after learning that the person wearing the coat did not realize he was on a fatal assignment.
He decided "not to trigger the button" despite his superior in the intelligence service being alongside at the moment and inquiring what was {going on|happening|occurring