[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
A Libyan man accused of building the device used in the Lockerbie bombing has appeared in a US court as his lawyers attempt to stop his alleged confession being used as evidence at his trial.
The US Department of Justice claims Abu Agila Mohammed Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, referred to as Masud, admitted taking part in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 when questioned at a Libyan detention facility in 2012.
However, Masud has claimed the confession is false, was made under duress and should be ruled inadmissible before his trial in Washington DC later this year. (...)
Wearing a washed-out prison uniform and sporting a short grey beard, Masud listened as the hearing before judge Dabney L Friedrich got under way at the District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday. (...)
Details of Masud's alleged confession were first made public when the FBI criminal complaint against him was published in 2020.
It is claimed Masud admitted bombing the LaBelle Discotheque in West Berlin in 1986, killing three people, including two American servicemen.
He is also said to have further confessed to taking a bomb hidden in a suitcase from Libya to Malta in December 1988, under the orders of senior officials from the Libyan intelligence service.
There, he is alleged to have met two accomplices - Abdulbasset Al Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of bombing the plane after standing trial 25 years ago, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a former Libyan Arab Airline official who was cleared by the same Scottish court.
According to the confession, Masud set the bomb timer so the explosion would occur exactly 11 hours later, bought clothes to pack into the brown Samsonsite suitcase that held the device, and then handed it to Fhimah at Luqa airport on Malta the next morning.
Fhimah was said to have placed it onto a conveyor belt, introducing the unaccompanied bag into the international baggage system, tagged to be flown to the US.
In court documents lodged before the hearing, Masud claimed he had been forced into making a false confession by three masked men who had threatened him and his family.
In response, the US government said Masud had freely provided a highly detailed insider account corroborated by other evidence from the case. (...)
In 2020, two FBI agents and two Police Scotland officers interviewed the Libyan official who questioned Masud in 2012, referred to in court as "Jamal".
Agent Tunstall said the contents of the confession were supported by evidence from the crime scene, forensics and immigration and flight records.
"Jamal" told the Scots and Americans he had tried to record what Masud was saying, using audio or video on a phone, but the recording was "lost". (...)
The hearing is scheduled to last two days, with the judge expected to issue her decision at a later date.
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