American Prosecuting Attorneys Allege Libyan National Willingly Admitted to Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing

US government attorneys have asserted that a Libyan national suspect willingly admitted to participating in terrorist acts directed at Americans, including the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 incident and an aborted conspiracy to assassinate a American politician using a rigged coat.

Admission Particulars

Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi is alleged to have acknowledged his participation in the murder of 270 people when Flight 103 was destroyed over the Scottish community of Lockerbie, during interrogation in a Libya's holding center in the year 2012.

Known as Mas'ud, the elderly man has claimed that several disguised men pressured him to make the admission after intimidating him and his loved ones.

His attorneys are working to stop it from being used as proof in his court case in the US capital next year.

Courtroom Dispute

In response, legal counsel from the American justice department have said they can establish in legal proceedings that the statement was "willing, reliable and correct."

The existence of the suspect's alleged confession was originally revealed in 2020, when the American authorities stated it was indicting him with building and activating the bomb employed on Flight 103.

Legal Team Assertions

The defendant is accused of being a former colonel in Libya's intelligence service and has been in US detention since recent years.

He has pleaded not guilty to the allegations and is due to face trial at the US court for the the capital in the coming months.

His attorneys are attempting to block the jury from being informed about the confession and have presented a motion asking for it to be excluded.

They assert it was obtained under coercion following the revolution which toppled Colonel Gaddafi in the early 2010s.

Claimed Pressure

They assert ex- personnel of the dictator's administration were being targeted with illegal deaths, seizures and abuse when the suspect was abducted from his home by hostile persons the next year.

He was transported to an unregistered detention center where additional inmates were purportedly beaten and abused and was by himself in a cramped cell when three masked individuals gave him a solitary page of documentation.

His legal representatives claimed its manually written details commenced with an order that he was to acknowledge to the Pan Am Flight 103 incident and a separate violent act.

Substantial Terrorist Attacks

The defendant states he was told to learn what it said about the events and restate it when he was interviewed by a different individual the next day.

Being concerned for his security and that of his family, he said he believed he had no option but to acquiesce.

In their reply to the defense's motion, legal counsel from the US Department of Justice have said the judge was being requested to suppress "very significant proof" of the defendant's culpability in "several major extremist attacks against Americans."

Prosecution Rebuttals

They say the suspect's story of occurrences is unconvincing and false, and assert that the details of the admission can be supported by credible external testimony collected over many periods.

The legal authorities claim Mas'ud and fellow former officials of the former leader's intelligence service were detained in a covert holding center operated by a militia when they were interviewed by an knowledgeable Libya's investigator.

They argue that in the chaos of the aftermath period, the center was "the most secure location" for Mas'ud and the additional personnel, given the violence and resistance sentiment dominant at the time.

Interrogation Particulars

According to the police officer who interviewed Mas'ud, the location was "efficiently operated", the prisoners were not restrained and there were no indications of abuse or pressure.

The official has said that over 48 hours, a confident and fit defendant explained his involvement in the bombings of the aircraft.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also stated he had acknowledged creating a explosive which detonated in a German club in the mid-1980s, causing the deaths of three persons, including several US soldiers, and wounding many others.

Further Claims

He is also alleged to have detailed his involvement in an conspiracy on the life of an unidentified US foreign minister at a public event in the Asian country.

The suspect is said to have explained that a person with the US figure was bearing a explosive-laden coat.

It was the suspect's assignment to activate the explosive but he decided not to do so after discovering that the man wearing the item did not realize he was on a suicide mission.

He decided "not to activate the trigger" although his supervisor in the agency being with him at the moment and questioning what was {going on|happening|occurring