Abu Agila Mas'ud: Suspected Lockerbie bomb maker says he was forced into false confession

Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi has said he was in custody in Libya when three masked men ordered him to memorise information about the destruction of Pan Am 103 and another terror attack, it has been reported.

The 74-year-old said he repeated what he had learned to a Libyan official, under duress, after the men threatened his family.

Masud's lawyers have asked a federal court in Washington to rule the alleged confession inadmissible in advance of his trial in April next year.

Details of the alleged confession were first made public five years ago after the US Department of Justice announced it was charging Mas'ud over the atrocity that claimed the lives of 270 people on December 21, 1988.

A criminal complaint summary compiled by the FBI claimed he had admitted playing a key role in the attack when he was in detention in 2012, following the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi's regime the previous year.

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The bureau said Mas'ud had talked of being involved in the plot, along with other members of the Libyan intelligence service.

Afterwards, he was said to have been congratulated in person by the Libyan dictator, who had told him he had performed "a great national duty" against the Americans.

Mas'ud’s defence lawyers have said in support of a submitted motion: "Just as ... a black man accused of killing a white man in Jim Crow-era Arkansas would fear mob violence ... so would a Libyan who allegedly worked for Gaddafi have feared retaliation against himself and his family in post-revolution Libya."

The Libyan national has alleged he was abducted from his home by armed men before being held, with no contact with his family, in an unofficial prison facility.

He reportedly claims a document was that put in front of him by men he believed were anti-Gadaffi revolutionaries.

"The single, handwritten sheet began with an order that Mr Al-Marimi confess to the Lockerbie incident, as well as another terrorist attack," his defence lawyers have claimed.

The lawyers added: "They told him he had to answer the questions with what was on the paper, otherwise bad things would happen to him or his family. Mr Al-Marimi felt he had no choice but to comply. He had ample reason to fear for himself; before his seizure, he had personally witnessed beatings in others prisons. But he was more afraid for his family.”

Mas'ud had originally been due to go on trial in Washington in May, but district court judge Dabney L Friedrich agreed to a postponement following submissions from the prosecution and defence.

Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only man convicted in relation to the bombing, after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges sitting at a special court in the Hague in 2001.

He was sent to prison in Scotland, but was controversially granted compassionate release in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, returning home to Libya where he died in 2012.

Prosecutors have always maintained that Megrahi acted with others in carrying out the attack.