Lockerbie bombing accused loses bid to have case thrown out
Abu Agila Mas'ud al-Marimi had claimed he was victim of an illegal rendition when he was transferred into US custody.
**Lockerbie bombing accused loses bid to have case thrown out**
**Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi has been in custody since December 2022**
A Libyan man accused of making the bomb that brought down a US airliner over Lockerbie more than 24 years ago has failed in his attempt to have the case dismissed.
Abu Agila Mas'ud al-Marimi said he was the victim of an unlawful rendition when he was moved into US custody from Libya in 2022.
A US district court judge has decided that the way he was taken should not stop his trial from proceeding in Washington in January.
Marimi denies having played a central part in the attack on Pan Am 103, which killed 270 people on 21 December 1988.
Hundreds of people died when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988
Details of his bid to have the case thrown out were made public in documents filed with the Washington court.
Marimi's lawyers said he was forcibly taken from his home in Tripoli in 2022 by armed militia members, "in a cloak and dagger operation conducted in the middle of the night".
They said that weeks later, after being held in a detention centre without access to lawyers, he was handed over to FBI agents at an airport in Misrata and flown to the United States.
Marimi argued that the case should be dismissed because the United States had violated his constitutional rights and breached extradition agreements between the US and Libya.
Court transcripts obtained by BBC Scotland News show that trial judge Dabney Friedrich rejected the defence application.
She cited a long-established American legal principle stating that a court's authority to conduct a trial is not affected if the suspect was forcibly abducted.
"This rule rests on the principle that due process of law is satisfied when one present in court is convicted of a crime after a fair trial and in accordance with constitutional procedural safeguards," said the judge.
"Put differently, there's nothing in the Constitution that requires a court to permit a guilty person rightfully convicted to escape justice because he was brought to trial against his will."
In her decision, the judge said there were two exceptions to that principle.
One would apply if Marimi had been brought before the court through the US government's "deliberate, unnecessary and unreasonable invasion" of his constitutional rights.
For that exception to apply, the disputed conduct had to be carried out by, or at the direction of, US officials.
The judge said Marimi's claims "at best suggest that US government officials exerted pressure on Libyan officials to facilitate a rendition, not that US government officials directed or controlled the challenged conduct."
The second exception would apply if the US government had broken an extradition agreement that was the only means by which a suspect could be transferred between the two countries.
The judge said the US government had relied on two conventions to secure Marimi's appearance in a US court.
"Neither the Montreal Convention nor the Terrorists Bombing Convention provides that it is the only way by which one country may gain custody of a national of another country for the purposes of prosecution," she said.
"Accordingly, Libya was free to transfer Mr Al-Marimi to the United States using any method it chose."
The defence and prosecution have been involved in a series of legal disputes ahead of Marimi's trial, which is now due to begin on 19 January after three delays.
In another ruling, the judge also turned down a defence motion to exclude a confession said to have been made by Marimi while he was in custody in Libya in 2012.
According to the FBI, Marimi admitted building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 in an operation carried out by the Libyan intelligence service.
Marimi says the confession was untrue and was made under duress.
The only previous criminal trial connected to the Lockerbie bombing took place between May 2000 and January 2001, when three Scottish judges convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdulbasset al-Megrahi of playing a key role in the plot.
Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died three years later at his home in Tripoli.