lockerbie, of course, is a town in scotland. but i think the other thing that s really interesting when we talk about what kind of evidence has come out, why this has taken so long, 34 years, alex, is a long time. the doj indictment two years ago which happened on the 32nd anniversary of the attack, that only came out three years after u.s. officials apparently got their hands on a 2012 interview where masud apparently at least provided evidence in some sort of confession when he was being held in a libyan prison under different criminal charges. there s going to be a lot of legal questions surrounding any kind of confession or what exactly was said on libyan soil, and i think the big question, obviously, and why there was so much surprise here on this side of the pond, alex, and why exactly he of course is in u.s. custody and being tried in the u.s. those are questions yet to be fully answered. you talk about the legal issues.
there are all sorts of sources and methods that were probably employed. here s the other thing, i don t know that we re going to get an answer to that question in today s court hearing because that will not really be the subject of what the judge has to decide today. the judge simply needs to arrange masud on the indictment and then make a decision that s probably a foregone conclusion, whether he s a flight risk or a danger to the community or others such that he should be detained pending trial. feels like an easy call. but it s still a legal determination, the judge will have to reach. thank you so much for updating us on this developing and breaking news. for all of you, we re learning new details this morning about brittney griner s first moments of freedom. new photos show griner pictured on u.s. soil there along with her wife cherelle and a key negotiator who helped secure her
we have glen to address those right now. 2017, u.s. officials get a hand on this tape, right? taped in 2012. an alleged confession to having made this bomb that brought down pan am flight 103 and yet the indictment came three years later. why so long? molly brings up a great point. i think one of the legal battles that we re going to see fought in this case moving forward, alex, is the admissibility of a 2012 confession by masud given to libyan law enforcement officials. the rules in different countries are different with respect to, you know, how officials can go about extracting a confession from a suspect or a detainee. i was happy to see when i was reading through the lengthy affidavit setting out the evidence, some of the evidence, we re going to hear more about it i think later today when masud makes his first appearance
an understatement. we re looking forward to seeing the suspect in court, seeing what kind of information the doj and the fbi present, actually have in their hands. the biggest unknown, alex, the biggest question we have today is how did he actually get into u.s. hands? how did he get into u.s. custody. two years ago, just to back up a little bit, the doj this is where all of our current information is coming, the doj charged masud with two criminal accounts, alleging he had played a key role in the attack. in that indictment, they laid out that he knew how to build bombs between the years of 1973 and 2011. he will be the first libyan operative to be tried on u.s. soil in connection with this bombing. you ve heard from a couple of family members. it will be a huge relief,
would have it pretty buttoned up and they know what their evidence is, but just to give a sense of how long family members have waited, 34 years, it is an incredibly long time, and in 2001, katy, the first lockerbie trial in the netherlands, three scottish judges convicted one libyan operative and the prosecutors said there were more people involved. in 2012, masud give this interview, and we don t know what the circumstances of the interview were, or whether it was under duress, but he does confess to making the bomb. in 2017, katy, u.s. officials get wind of this interview, and it is not until 2020, two years ago, on the anniversary of the bombing, that the d.o.j. brings charges. we expect to see masud, we expect to see him at 1:00 p.m. and he is now going to be there at 3:00 p.m., and so many huge questions, whether exactly, you know, how long the trial is going to be, what kinds of trial