Fhimah placed it onto a conveyor belt, introducing the unaccompanied bag into the international baggage system, tagged to be flown to the US.
Later that night, at 31,000 ft, it exploded in the forward hold of Pan Am 103.
Al-Marimi is alleged to have claimed he was later congratulated in person by the late Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, for carrying out “a great national duty” against the Americans.
The Washington court has heard that the Libyan police officer – referred to as Jamal – kept a handwritten document containing the confession and a carbon copy of the statement in a safe in his home.
In 2015, he handed them over to the Libyan Attorney General’s Office, who gave a copy of the confession to prosecutors from Scotland’s Crown Office two years later. They shared it with the Americans.
The team of public defenders representing Al-Marimi at the District Council of the District of Columbia asked for the alleged confession to be excluded from his trial.
Jamal gave evidence in person at a hearing in the United States as judge Dabney Friedrich considered whether the statement should be allowed as evidence.
Prosecutors argued its highly-detailed contents could be corroborated to an extent unlikely with a fabricated confession.
At one point, Judge Friedrich instructed the US government to get hold of the original handwritten document and the carbon copy, only to be told the authorities in Tripoli couldn’t find them.