A judge is to decide whether the confession of Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 almost 40 years ago, can be used in his coming trial, amid claims it was made under duress.
All 259 people on board perished in the terrorist attack, and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, were killed by falling debris on December 21, 1988, shortly after the Pan Am flight took off from London.
Last week, Mr Masud, now aged in his mid-70s, appeared in the Washington district court, as victims' families packed the courtroom and listened closely for what could prove to be a pivotal moment leading up to his trial.
Mr Masud and his court-appointed lawyers have long challenged that his confession, made to a Libyan investigator, which ultimately led to his arrest, was made under duress and that he was threatened, assaulted and therefore forced to lie about being the man who built the bomb.
Last week, a Libyan investigator who questioned and obtained a confession from Mr Masud in 2012 took the stand and was questioned by prosecutors, the defence lawyers and District Judge Dabney Friedrich.
The investigator, referred to in court transcripts simply as Jamal, gave details to federal prosecutors about how he came to question Mr Masud in relation to other incidents, and how the Lockerbie confession surprised him while doing so.
“I never investigated a crime which included more than two deceased people,” he told US prosecutor Erik Kenerson.
“The importance of the event and the size of the crime was the reason why I took the decision to record the interview.”
The US government filed charges against Mr Masud in 2020, arrested him in 2022, and he pleaded not guilty in 2023.
Mr Masud’s health problems have delayed the start of his trial, and his challenge to the confession leading to his arrest has also complicated the judicial process.
He now continues to claim that his confession was nothing more than a “script allegedly foisted on him by three masked men” who beat him up while he was imprisoned in Libya.
According to court transcripts seen by The National, US prosecutors say the man who interrogated Mr Masud, both at the time of the questioning and to this day, did not see any injuries on the suspect, and that his demeanour did not reflect someone who had just been assaulted or threatened.
“He said that after he delivered the suitcase in the Malta airport and came back to Libya, and he heard there was an explosion that happened on board a US plane,” Jamal told US prosecutors. “And he said that was the same plane that was targeted.”
Investigators have long said that the bomb that took down the plane was sneaked into a suitcase in Malta and eventually placed on Flight 103 at Heathrow.
However, during Mr Masud’s appearance in court last week, one of his lawyers, Laura Koenig, attempted to challenge Jamal’s record-keeping, interrogation process and the centre where the questioning took place.
Mr Masud's lawyer brought up the lack of a recorded confession, but federal prosecutors pointed to meticulous notes taken by the man questioning Mr Masud, and Jamal highlighted that he had tried to record on an older phone, but the data was somehow lost.
On Friday, several family members of Pan Am victims gathered in a special room set aside to read the lengthy transcripts from the two-day hearing.
Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband Michael died on board Pan Am 103, looked through each page and quietly spoke with others in the room doing the same.
“This makes what has been so distant very present,” she told The National.
“It’s a little surreal because we've waited such a long time, and we've had the suspect here for three years.”
Ms Bernstein said that for the most part, Mr Masud has been relatively reserved in court.
“His demeanour has been almost expressionless,” she said, before pivoting to the crimes he’s accused of.
“But make no mistake, he's a seasoned, high-level bomb maker in Libya’s ESO [External Security Organisation] under [Muammar] Qaddafi at the rank of colonel.”
In 2003, Libya claimed responsibility for the attack that took down the plane.
Only one other person, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, has been convicted for the bombing.
Of the victims, 190 were American citizens, along with others from the UK, Argentina, the Philippines, and other countries.
The judge, Ms Friedrich, told the court she needed more time and had more questions about Mr Masud’s confession before deciding whether or not it could be used.
Jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin on August 24.
