The bombing, which is the deadliest-ever terror attack in Britain, killed all 259 people on board Pan Am flight 103 and 11 people on the ground in the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
A federal judge has postponed a trial in the US of a former Libyan intelligence official charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, citing the discovery of new evidence that defence attorneys want to examine in the nearly 40-year-old case.
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Jury selection was scheduled to begin on Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammd Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington. His trial will be the first in the US for the 21 December 1988 bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland, which killed 270 people.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order didn’t specify the nature of the newly discovered evidence.
Al-Marimi’s lawyers say prosecutors disclosed the new evidence to them on Saturday and added that their “constitutional and ethical obligations require the defence to investigate this development.”
Defence attorney Laura Koenig, an assistant federal public defender, declined to elaborate in response to press inquiries.
The judge scheduled a 1 September hearing in Washington to discuss the status of the case. Friedrich's brief order cited the complex nature of the case, the newly discovered evidence and “the need for the defence to determine how best to defend this case” as reasons to postpone the trial.
Al-Marimi is charged in the US with making the bomb that downed the airplane.
Flight 103 was 9.45 kilometres over Lockerbie when a bomb in the plane’s forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after take-off from London Heathrow Airport.
The flight was bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The blast killed all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, where the wreckage destroyed an entire block.
Citizens of 21 countries were killed, including 190 Americans and 43 from the United Kingdom. The passengers included 35 Syracuse University students returning home from a semester abroad.
Kara Weipz, board president of the nonprofit Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said her organisation had received no details about the new evidence that prompted the trial delay. Weipz’s brother Richard Monetti was among the Syracuse students killed.
She called the delay a shock and noted that some victims' relatives were already packing to head to the trial.
“At the same time, for almost 38 years we've been seeking the truth of what happened,” Weipz said. “If that's what this is, then that's a good thing, and this delay is worth it. It's important to hear all the facts.”
Prosecutors allege Al-Marimi and others carried out the bombing at the direction of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was ousted and killed during a 2011 civil war.
Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges on a former US military base in the Netherlands in 2000. The tribunal convicted one official and acquitted the other, but the bombmaker’s possible identity remained a mystery for years.
Al-Marimi, now in his mid-70s, is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.
Al-Marimi worked for the Libyan intelligence service from approximately 1973-2011, rising to the rank of colonel, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors believe he brought a suitcase containing a bomb to an airport in Malta and gave it to co-conspirators for a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. The suitcase travelled from Frankfurt to London, where it was loaded onto Flight 103, according to investigators.