Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Masud confession. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Masud confession. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Lockerbie bombing: US said to be near charges for another suspect in 1988 plane crash

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Wall Street Journal. It reads in part:]

US prosecutors are expected to unseal charges against a suspect they allege was a top bomb-maker for the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and assembled the device that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, opening a new chapter in one of the world’s longest and most sprawling terrorism investigations.

The Justice Department is expected to unseal a criminal complaint against Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, who is currently held by Libyan authorities, in the coming days and to seek his extradition for trial on charges in US federal court, according to senior department officials. (...)

The case, filed by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, is based largely on a confession that Mr Masud gave to Libyan authorities in 2012, which was turned over to Scottish authorities in 2017, as well as travel and immigration records of Mr Masud, US officials said.

Libyan officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges against Mr Masud.

Only one man — Abdel Baset al-Megrahi — was convicted by Scottish judges of playing a role in the attack, leaving many of the victims’ families saying they felt robbed of justice for the crimes. Megrahi was released eight years after his 2001 conviction on “compassionate grounds” and he died in 2012.

His family is appealing the verdict, which was made by a special panel of judges without a jury. Some prominent Scottish jurists and family members of the victims have questioned the evidence presented and the procedure used for the trial, which was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in a bid to find a neutral locale. UK prosecutors have argued that the case was properly prosecuted and the judges’ initial verdict should stand and US law-enforcement authorities have long supported the guilty verdict.

The case is also of personal significance to Attorney General William Barr, who had announced US charges against Megrahi and another Libyan official in his first major press conference in his first stint in the job in 1991. He is expected to unveil the new case at a press conference in the next few days, officials said, in what will be one of his last official public acts before he steps down from serving in the post a second time later this week.

In announcing the case as acting attorney general in the Bush administration in 1991, Mr Barr said: “we will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice.” The efforts to prosecute the men drifted for years. Scottish prosecutors had brought a parallel case, and it wasn’t until 1999—after years of wrangling among the US, the UK and Libya—that the Gadhafi regime handed over Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Mr Fhimah was acquitted, and Megrahi was given a life sentence.

Evidence in the Megrahi prosecution included the remains of clothing from a suitcase thought to have carried the bomb. Investigators traced the clothing to a shop in Malta, whose owner identified Megrahi as the man who purchased it. Investigators also found remnants of a thumb-size timer, which they traced to a Swiss company that had contacts with Libya.

Mr Masud faces charges of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle of interstate commerce resulting in death. US officials said he traveled to Malta just before the bombing, constructed the bomb there and filled the suitcase with clothing before it was ultimately placed on Pan Am 103.

In Libya, the charges against a former Gadhafi regime official recall an era of an era of terror and repression under the former government. (...)

Some Libyans still believe their country was falsely accused. But many regard any accusations against the former regime as the work of a deposed and discredited government.

The United Nations Security Council put sanctions on Libya over the Lockerbie attack, isolating the country internationally. The UN lifted the sanctions in 2003 after the government agreed to pay out compensation to the victims, easing Libya’s isolation. (...)

Libyan authorities have questioned jailed former regime officials in connection with the bombing, according to Mohammed Ali Abdullah, an adviser to the Tripoli government. Among those questioned was Abdullah Senussi, Gadhafi’s former intelligence chief, who is being held in a prison in Tripoli and also has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The Lockerbie bombing wasn’t the only international act of terror the Gadhafi regime was accused of carrying out. In 1986, Libyan agents bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people including two American soldiers and injuring more than 200 others. In 2001, a German court convicted a former Libyan diplomat and three accomplices over the attack.

[RB: A last throw of the dice over Lockerbie by William Barr before he demits office as US Attorney General. Abu Agila Masud's name has long featured in speculation about the Lockerbie case. The most balanced consideration of his position comes in (a) John Ashton's article about the Ken Dornstein film in the Scottish Review "The coverage of the film is more notable for what it omits than what it reveals" and (b) Kevin Bannon's A response to the Dornstein documentaryboth in November 2015.]

Thursday, 22 December 2022

What might a second Lockerbie trial look like?

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Mustafa Fetouri just published on the website of the Middle East Monitor. It reads in part:]

Libyan Abu Agila Muhammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi will appear for the second time before a federal court in Washington DC next Tuesday where he will be told formally of the charges against him. Mas'ud first appeared in court eight days ago after he was kidnapped from his bedroom in Tripoli on 12 December. The US law enforcement agencies colluded with a notorious local militia to snatch the old man and take him to America.

In his first appearance in court the suspect refused to talk to the judge because he claimed that he did not have a lawyer. It was reported that he rejected the lawyer appointed by the court to represent him. His family is working to provide their own lawyer.

The 71 year old will face charges relating to his alleged part in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people were killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. (...)

The US has always insisted on trying the Lockerbie case in its own courts but it failed to get access to the suspects as Libya refused to hand over its citizens to the Americans. After a decade of negotiations and political wrangling by the late Nelson Mandela and others, it was agreed to have the trial in Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands.

Today, 34 years later, the US appears to have its long-awaited Lockerbie bombing trial, the second in a case that is not only very old but also very complicated.

So what might second Lockerbie trial look like in a US court? What are the chances of Mas'ud being found guilty or acquitted? Furthermore, what will be the implications of the verdict on the whole case, particularly on the conviction of the late al-Megrahi whose lawyer, Aamer Anwar, has been trying to overturn his conviction, posthumously, since 2014 without success? Will Mas'ud's defence be able to convince the American jury that his client had nothing to do with the bomb that destroyed the doomed flight?

The US prosecutors have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, many things. For a start they have to establish a link between Mas'ud and the bomb in the first place and that he did, indeed, make the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. The US alleges that he confessed to this in 2012 while being interrogated in Libya's notorious Al-Hadba Prison, south of Tripoli. Many question if such a confession is admissible in court given the conditions in which it was extracted. Former US Attorney General William Barr insisted recently that the confession is admissible in a US federal court. He even called for the death penalty if Mas'ud is convicted after prosecutors said that they will not seek capital punishment.

Al-Hadba has a terrible reputation. In 2015, Human Rights Watch questioned the methods used to interrogate detainees, including senior former Gaddafi officials, one of whom was Gaddafi's son Saad. A Tripoli-based legal expert who requested anonymity said, "Only a kangaroo court might accept anything let alone a confession from Al-Hadba Prison."

Moreover, to get a conviction, US prosecutors must convince the jury that it was a bomb made by Mas'ud, and no other device, that destroyed the Boeing 747 Jumbo jet on that cold evening as it flew at 31,000 feet. The prosecution apparently rests on the US allegation that Mas'ud handed over a Samsonite suitcase containing the bomb to Fhima, who dropped it into the Pan Am Flight 103 luggage feeder at Luga Airport in Malta. Proving that Mas'ud was in Malta on 21 December 1988 might be easy, but proving that he actually took the explosive-laden suitcase and handed it over to Fhima is a difficult one. Any evidence presented here will be circumstantial as there are no witnesses to testify to seeing Fhima and Mas'ud at the airport or anywhere else in Malta 34 years ago.

One expert on the case, Scottish law Professor Robert Black, told me that he thinks the "crux of the case" against Mas'ud will be whether it "can be proved beyond reasonable doubt" that he manufactured the bomb that destroyed the aircraft. This would lead to issues connected with the timer alleged to have been used to detonate the bomb. Tiny fragments of that timer were, allegedly, found among the wreckage in a field almost a year after the disaster. More evidence emerged after the first trial in Camp Zeist, though, suggesting that that "evidence" was planted by US investigators to frame Libya. According to George Thompson, a private investigator who worked on the case, the type of timer said to have been used in the bomb was not in production in 1988.

The third issue is that the US prosecutors have to explain, convincingly, how and where the bomb got into the luggage hold area of the Boeing 747. The 34-year-old official US narrative is that the suitcase with the bomb inside came from Malta and was fed into Pan Am Flight 103A at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. The plane then left for London Heathrow Airport ... However, since the 2001 trial more evidence and testimonies have emerged challenging that theory.

Mas'ud's best chance of acquittal or getting a lenient sentence rests on his defence team's ability to reopen the entire Lockerbie issue. For any trial to be fair it must consider the Lockerbie bombing as a single case and the US should not cherry-pick what it likes to advance in its line of argument.

I believe that it should be an international court that tries Mas'ud, not a US federal court. The late Nelson Mandela, who mediated between the US, Britain and Libya to arrange the 2001 trial, once said, "No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge." However, that is exactly what the US is in Mas'ud's case. Is that fair? And does it mean that his chance of a fair trial is very, very small indeed?

So what might a second Lockerbie trial look like? A "kangaroo court" perhaps?

[RB: I am not an American lawyer, but in my view the precise mechanism whereby the bomb got onto Pan Am 103 won't loom large in the US trial. As I understand it, under the relevant Federal legislation (see US Department of Justice outlines allegations against Masudall the prosecution has to prove is (a) that Masud made the bomb (b) that he knew it would be planted on an aircraft and (c) that his bomb was so planted and led to the destruction of Pan Am 103. Proving precisely how the device got onto the aircraft would not be essential to getting a conviction. Establishing Masud's guilt does not require proof of how his bomb got onto the plane, whether via Malta, Frankfurt or Heathrow ingestion.

I think the crux of the case will be whether it can be proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was a Libyan bomb, manufactured by Masud, that brought the plane down. So the evidence that has emerged since Zeist about the metallurgy of the fragment of circuit board alleged to have formed part of the bomb timer will be vital: Lockerbie: Bomb trigger or clever fake?]

Thursday, 24 December 2020

The search for justice goes on and William Barr's actions are unlikely to help

[This is part of the headline over a long article by Kim Sengupta in The Independent. It reads in part:]

With great fanfare, on the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, the US has announced charges against the supposed bomb maker who blew up Pan Am flight 103, the worst act of terrorism in this country, with 270 lives lost.  

One of William Barr’s final acts as Donald Trump’s Attorney General, a deeply controversial tenure, is supposed to fit one of the final pieces of the jigsaw in the hunt for the killers.  

There are historic links between the Lockerbie investigation and the current, turbulent chapter of American politics. Barr was also the Attorney General in 1991, in the George W Bush administration, when charges were laid against two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, over the bombing. The inquiry was led at the time by Robert Mueller, the head of the Department of Justice’s criminal division.  

Mueller, of course, became the Special Counsel who examined if Trump was the Muscovian candidate for the White House. Barr was the Attorney General, in his second term in the post, accused of distorting the findings of Mueller’s report to protect Trump from accusations of obstruction of justice, which he denies.  

The charges which have been laid against Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, another Libyan, are intrinsically connected to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is the only person to have been found guilty by a court of the bombing.  

Megrahi is now dead. There are good reasons to hold that the investigation, trial and verdict which brought his conviction were flawed and a miscarriage of justice has taken place. This is a view shared by bereaved families, international jurists, intelligence officers and journalists who had followed the case.  

Last month, an appeal hearing began at the High Court in Edinburgh to posthumously clear Megrahi’s name. This was the third appeal in the attempt to prove that the verdict against him was unsound, with his legal team focusing on the veracity of the prosecution evidence at his trial. 

Much of the case against Masud, a former Libyan intelligence officer, now charged, comes from an alleged confession he made in jail, where he had ended up after the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Masud, according to the FBI, named Megrahi and Fhimah as co-conspirators, who had together manufactured an explosive device using Semtex during a trip to Malta. Masud has said that he had bought the clothing which had been wrapped around the bomb, hidden in a radio-cassette player, before being placed in a Samsonite suitcase which was put on the flight.  

There are two points which are immediately relevant. The same trial which convicted Megrahi had acquitted Fhimah of all charges. And one of the key allegations against Megrahi, which the judges said made them decide on the verdict of guilt, was that it was he who had bought the clothing put around the explosive device.  

These contradictions are among many, big and small, which have marked the official narrative presented by the US and UK authorities of what lay behind the downing of the airliner.  

I went to Lockerbie on the night of the bombing, attended the trial of the two Libyan defendants, and met Megrahi at his home in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where he had been allowed to return after suffering from cancer. I have followed the twists and turns of the case throughout.   

Soon after the downing of the Pan Am flight, American and British security officials began laying the blame on an Iran-Syria axis. The scenario was that Tehran had taken out a contract in revenge for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, which had been shot down by missiles fired from an American warship, the USS Vincennes, a few months earlier. The theory went that the contract had been taken up by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which specialised in such operations.  

But the blame switched to Libya, then very much a pariah state, around the time Iran and Syria joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. Robert Baer, the former American intelligence officer and author, was among those who held that the Iranian sponsored hit was the only plausible explanation for the attack. This was the firm belief held “to a man”, he stated, by his former colleagues in the CIA.  

After years of wrangling, Megrahi, the former head of security at Libyan Airlines and allegedly in the Libyan security service, and Fhimah, allegedly a fellow intelligence officer, were finally extradited in 1999. (...)

The two men were charged with joint enterprise and conspiracy. Yet only Megrahi was found guilty. (...)

So, deprived of finding a partner in crime for Megrahi, the prosecutor switched to claiming, and the judges accepting, that he had conspired with himself.  

The prosecution evidence was circumstantial; details of the bomb timer on the plane were contradictory; and the testimony of a key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper, extremely shaky under cross-examination. Five years on from the trial, the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmville – who had been responsible for initiating the Lockerbie prosecution – described the witness, Tony Gauci, as “an apple short of a picnic” and “not quite the full shilling”. Gauci was, however, flush in dollars: the Americans paid him for his testimony.  

The performance and evidence of a supposedly prime “CIA intelligence asset”, Abdul Majid Giaka, codenamed “Puzzle Piece” who turned up in a Shirley Bassey wig, was widely viewed as risible. It emerged later that important evidence had not been passed on to the defence lawyers. Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer who testified to the validity of a key piece of evidence, admitted later in an affidavit of lying to the court.  

It has also emerged that Giaka had been described by his CIA handler, John Holt, in an official report as someone who had a “history of making up stories”.

Holt was denied permission to appear at court. Earlier this month he reiterated in an interview that, like his CIA colleagues, he believes the Libyan connection was a concocted red herring and culpability lay with PFLP (GC). "I would start by asking the current Attorney General, William Barr, why he suddenly switched focus in 1991, when he was also Attorney General, from where clear evidence was leading, toward a much less likely scenario involving Libyans”, he said.  

The observer for the UN at the trial, Hans Kochler severely criticised the verdict. Writing later in The Independent, he described a case based on “circumstantial evidence”; the “lack of credibility” of key prosecution witnesses who “had incentives to bear false witness against Megrahi”; the fact that one was paid cash by the Americans; and that “so much key information was withheld from the trial”.    

Robert Black, a law professor born in Lockerbie, who played an important role in organising the Camp Zeist proceedings, later became convinced that a great injustice had taken place, as have many other eminent jurists.  

Some who were in Lockerbie on that terrible night and dealt with the aftermath also felt the same way. Father Patrick Keegans, the parish priest at the time, joined the “Justice for Megrahi” campaign after meeting the convicted man’s family and has backed appeals to clear his name.  

Many members of the bereaved families feel that justice has not been done, among them Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing and became a spokesman for “UK Families 103”.  

When there were objections to the severely ill Megrahi being allowed to return to Tripoli, he pointed out “the scandal around Megrahi is not that a sick man was released, but that he was even convicted in the first place. All I have ever wanted to see is that the people who murdered my daughter are brought to justice.”  

After the charging of Masud, Dr Swire said: “I'm all in favour of whatever he's got to tell us being examined in a court, of course I am. The more people who look at the materials we have available the better.”  

He wanted to stress: “There are only two things that we seek, really. One is the question of why those lives were not protected in view of all the warnings and the second is: what does our government and the American government really know about who is responsible for murdering them.”  

Some bereaved families have criticised the presentation and motivation of the US move. The State Department had sent an invitation for livestreaming of the event.  

Reverend John Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Helga in the bombing, said the “timing and particularly the choice of this specific day, which is special to many of us, to be bizarre, disrespectful, insensitive and extremely ill considered”. He added: “Why exactly, when the Attorney General is about to leave office, has he waited 32 years to bring charges?”  

Behind the controversy over who carried out the attack, the political manoeuvres and legal actions, lay the human tragedy of Lockerbie, a scene which is difficult to forget, even after three decades, for many of us who went there.  (...)

There is also the memory of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, at his home in Tripoli in 2012. He lay in his bed attached to a drip, on red sheets stained by dark splashes of blood he had coughed up. An oxygen mask covered his skeletal face; his body twitched as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was in the advanced stages of cancer: medicine he desperately needed had been plundered by looters; the doctors who had been treating him had fled. He died a few months later.  

The bitter accusations and recriminations over Lockerbie are unlikely to cease. But the search for justice for this terrible act of violence which took so many lives, and caused so much pain and grief, continues to remain elusive among the secrets and lies. 

Thursday, 22 October 2015

Father of victim says nothing reliable will come out of Lockerbie probe

[This is the headline over a report published in today’s edition of The National. The Rev’d John Mosey, as ever, speaks sound sense on Lockerbie. The article reads as follows:]

The father of a teenage Lockerbie victim yesterday said the new probe will not help “find the truth” after Libyan authorities offered prosecutors the chance to interview suspects.
Musician Helga Mosey was just 19 when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town, killing her and 269 other people in 1988. Now Scottish prosecutors have been invited to Libya to interview two new suspects in the case.
Although the pair have not been officially named, it is understood that they are Mohammed Abouajela Masud and Abdullah al-Senussi.
Both are serving prison terms in Libya, with Masud thought to be serving 10 years for bomb-making and Senussi – the brother-in-law and intelligence chief of former dictator Colonel Gaddafi – on death row.
Jamal Zubair, spokesman for the self-declared National Salvation government which controls much of the country, said authorities would facilitate interviews with the men, telling the BBC: “They can send some investigators, they come here to see those guys and see what they can do.
“Always we are very helpful, we want to talk to people and we want to show what we have.
“We might have more evidence about other people or maybe those guys have more information about something else.”
However, Mosey’s father John has expressed doubt about the development, telling broadcaster West Sound: “I’m not quite sure whether I would accept as genuine or real anything that came out of troubled Libya just at the moment.
“I think that if you spread enough dollars around and make enough promises you could get almost anybody to say almost anything.
“I know that if I was on death row like Senussi is there, I would offer to make any confession they wanted in exchange for a centrally heated cell in Glasgow with Sky TV.”
Though Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, is the only person ever convicted of the atrocity, it was always believed that he did not work alone and Scottish and US investigators announced that two new suspects had been identified last week.
The development follows the screening of a three-part documentary series by American Ken Dornstein, whose brother David died in the atrocity.
He said: “We went in with a list of names that had come from the original investigation, pulled out of the tens of thousands of pages of documents. I established many were dead or missing. “Ultimately, I concluded there may be three people left.”
Speaking about Masud, he added: “Figuring out simply that he existed would solve many of the unanswered questions to the bombing because he was attached to Megrahi according to the best information there was, including at the airport in Malta on the day that the bomb was said to have been infiltrated into the baggage system and ultimately on to Flight 103.”
However, Mosey, from Lancaster, who believes Megrahi was innocent, said: “I don’t think it’s a step forward, I think it’s an effort to delay forward movement.
“The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, an independent body, came up with six grounds on which there could have been a miscarriage of justice against Megrahi, who personally I don’t believe was involved at all.
“These are the things that need looking at really, not remote interviews with people that might or might not be involved.
“They need to look at the serious, serious questionings there are about the outcome of the trial, which I attended the whole of.
“I have no confidence that any good will come out of this. I think it’s a blind of some sort to delay facing the real facts.
“There’s certainly no closure for us. We think of our daughter every day and it’s something we carry til the day we die.
“If you mean closure in finding the truth, no I don’t think this is going to bring us any closure at all.”

Sunday, 11 December 2022

Lockerbie bombing suspect in US custody

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A Libyan man accused of making the bomb which destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie 34 years ago is in United States custody, Scottish authorities have said.

The US announced charges against Abu Agila Masud two years ago, alleging that he played a key role in the bombing on 21 December, 1988.

The blast on board the Boeing 747 left 270 people dead.

It is the deadliest terrorist incident to have taken place on British soil. (...)

Last month it was reported that Masud had been kidnapped by a militia group in Libya, leading to speculation that he was going to be handed over to the American authorities to stand trial.

In 2001 Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing Pan Am 103 after standing trial at a specially-convened Scottish court in the Netherlands.

He was the only man to be convicted over the attack.

Megrahi was jailed for life but was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after being diagnosed with cancer.

He died in Libya in 2012. (...)

A spokesperson for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said: "The families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi ("Mas'ud" or "Masoud") is in US custody.

"Scottish prosecutors and police, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with Al Megrahi to justice."

[What follows is excerpted from a report just published on the website of The New York Times:]

The arrest of the operative, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud, was the culmination of a decades-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him. In 2020, Attorney General William P Barr announced criminal charges against Mr Mas’ud, accusing him of building the explosive device used in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 passengers, including 190 Americans.

Mr Mas’ud faces two criminal counts, including destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He was being held at a Libyan prison for unrelated crimes when the Justice Department unsealed the charges against him two years ago. It is unclear how the US government negotiated the extradition of Mr Mas’ud.

Mr Mas’ud’s suspected role in the Lockerbie bombing received new scrutiny in a three-part documentary on “Frontline” on PBS in 2015. The series was written and produced by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed in the attack. Mr Dornstein learned that Mr Mas’ud was being held in a Libyan prison and even obtained pictures of him as part of his investigation. [RB: A critical commentary by John Ashton on the Dornstein documentary can be read here.] 

“If there’s one person still alive who could tell the story of the bombing of Flight 103, and put to rest decades of unanswered questions about how exactly it was carried out — and why — it’s Mr Mas’ud,” Mr Dornstein wrote in an email after learning Mr Mas’ud would finally be prosecuted in the United States. “The question, I guess, is whether he’s finally prepared to speak.”

After Col Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s leader, was ousted from power, Mr Mas’ud confessed to the bombing in 2012, telling a Libyan law enforcement official that he was behind the attack. Once investigators learned about the confession in 2017, they interviewed the Libyan official who had elicited it, leading to charges.

Even though extradition would allow Mr Mas’ud to stand trial, legal experts have expressed doubts about whether his confession, obtained in prison in war-torn Libya, would be admissible as evidence.

Mr Mas’ud, who was born in Tunisia but has Libyan citizenship, was the third person charged in the bombing. Two others, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged in 1991, but American efforts to prosecute them ran aground when Libya declined to send them to the United States or Britain to stand trial.

Instead, the Libyan government agreed to a trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law. Mr Fhimah was acquitted and Mr. al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. (...)

Prosecutors say that Mr Mas’ud played a key role in the bombing, traveling to Malta and delivering the suitcase that contained the bomb used in the attack. In Malta, Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhimah instructed Mr Mas’ud to set the timer on the device so it would blow up while the plane was in the air the next day, prosecutors said.

On the morning of Dec 21, 1988, Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhimah met Mr Mas’ud at the airport in Malta, where he turned over the suitcase. Prosecutors said Mr Fhimah put the suitcase on a conveyor belt, ultimately ending up on Pan Am Flight 103.

Mr Mas’ud’s name surfaced twice in 1988, even before the bombing took place. In October, a Libyan defector told the CIA he had seen Mr Mas’ud at the Malta airport with Mr Megrahi, saying the pair had passed through on a terrorist operation. Malta served as a primary launching point for Libya to initiate such attacks, the informant told the agency. That December, the day before the Pan Am bombing, the informant told the CIA that the pair had again passed through Malta. Nearly another year passed before the agency asked the informant about the bombing.

But investigators never pursued Mr Mas’ud in earnest until Mr Megrahi’s trial years later, only for the Libyans to insist that Mr Mas’ud did not exist. Mr. Megrahi also claimed he did not know Mr Mas’ud.

Saturday, 14 December 2024

Libyan Lockerbie suspect’s family urges international intervention

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of Libya Review. It reads as follows:]

On Saturday, the family of Abu Ajila Masoud Al-Marimi, the Libyan intelligence officer accused of involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, called on international human rights organizations to intervene urgently, claiming he is being tortured and denied medical care while in US custody. They report that his health has deteriorated significantly and warn of the potential danger to his life.

Al-Marimi was extradited to the United States from Libya in December 2022, a move his family insists was illegal. They say they have been denied any contact or visitation since his transfer and are calling for legal and humanitarian guarantees to ensure his safety. The family is also demanding his immediate return to Libya, where they believe he would receive better care and a fairer legal process. [RB: Masud was not "extradited" to the USA: he was abducted by a Libyan warlord and sold to the US authorities: 

https://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2022/12/even-facade-of-legality-was-not.html]

Al-Marimi’s son revealed that evidence for the upcoming trial, set for May 12, 2025, in Washington DC, has already been submitted. However, he criticized the court for allowing families of Lockerbie victims to attend hearings via video link while denying the same access to Al-Marimi’s family. Al-Marimi, now 71, has consistently denied the allegations against him, declaring in court that he had no involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

This is not the first time the family has raised alarm over his treatment. In June, they reported that he had been hospitalized due to multiple chronic illnesses. His nephew, Abdel Moneim Al-Marimi, expressed concerns about his uncle appearing in court without proper legal representation, as promised financial support for his defense has not materialized. Despite securing a lawyer at their own expense, the family claims they have received little assistance or updates from Libya’s Government of National Unity (GNU).

The 1988 Lockerbie bombing remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history, killing 270 people. Al-Marimi is accused of being involved in constructing the bomb used in the attack, based on claims that he made a confession to Libyan authorities.

His extradition has been widely criticized within Libya, with opponents arguing that it violated the country’s constitution and sovereignty. Protests erupted across Libya following his handover, with many accusing the GNU of yielding to foreign pressure.

The family’s renewed plea draws attention to Al-Marimi’s worsening health and alleged mistreatment, underscoring broader concerns about human rights violations and the legality of his transfer. They are calling on international organizations to investigate his case and intervene to ensure his basic rights are protected.

The case has further strained Libya’s fragile political climate, while in the US, it has reignited interest in securing accountability for the Lockerbie bombing. Al-Marimi’s family continues to assert his innocence, insisting that any alleged confession was coerced under duress.

Sunday, 3 January 2021

A second Scottish Lockerbie trial?

The following short piece by Marcello Mega appears in today's Scottish edition of The Mail on Sunday.
 
click on image for increased legibility

I am sceptical about the likelihood of another Scottish Lockerbie trial. In the first place, extradition of the suspects from Libya is highly unlikely. Secondly the evidential value of the alleged confession by Abu Agila Masud to making the bomb is highly questionable. Before relying upon it in support of an indictment and presenting it in evidence to a court the Scottish prosecutors would require to be satisfied (a) that it was in fact made and (b) that it was not obtained through torture or undue pressure or inducement. The cautionary experience of relying at the Zeist trial on a witness -- Majid Giaka -- supplied and vouched for by the US Department of Justice might indicate to the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office the wisdom of proceeding with great circumspection. 

Tuesday, 22 November 2022

Abducted Libyan "may have already left for America under guard"

[What follows is from a report published today on the Globe Echo news website:]

A Libyan official does not rule out deporting Abu Ageila to America

Thirty-three years after the terrorist bombing of the American Pan American plane over Scotland, American and Scottish investigators found what they wanted in Abu Ageila Masoud, a former officer in the Libyan intelligence service during the era of the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

And after Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, head of the interim “unity” government, and his foreign minister, Naglaa al-Manqoush, announced, on various occasions, the desire to reopen the case again, the fate of Abu Ajila became unknown, as his family says that he was kidnapped by unknown gunmen.

According to Libyan sources, the kidnapping of Abu Ajila from his home took place in agreement between the security services of Al-Dabaiba and the kidnappers, who are likely to be American, to undergo the trial that remained open in the horrific accident, where the wreckage of the Pan Am 103 plane was scattered over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, and resulted in About 270 people were killed, most of them Americans. A Libyan official told Asharq Al-Awsat that he “does not rule out that he has already left for America under strict security guard.”

According to US official papers, US investigators received information about a confession that Abu Ageila made to a Libyan official in an interview on September 12, 2012.

Abu Ajila Muhammad Masoud Khair al-Marimi worked for the Jamahiriya Security Service, which was sometimes referred to as the External Security Service (Libyan Intelligence), which was accused of carrying out terrorist acts against other countries and suppressing the activities of Libyan dissidents abroad. He held various positions, including a “technical expert” in the construction of explosive devices since 1973, and received promotions to the rank of colonel during his tenure.

[RB: Here is what I replied to a query on the Friends of Justice for Megrahi Facebook page:]

If Masud has been handed over to the Americans for trial, that could be a good thing. Maybe an American jury court wouldn't be as gullible as the Scottish judges at Zeist. And a lot of evidence favourable to the defence has emerged since 2001.