The explosion killed all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie
The US trial of a former Libyan intelligence operative accused over the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing has been delayed after fresh evidence came to light, a federal judge ruled on Monday. Defence attorneys requested time to review the material in the case, which spans nearly four decades.
Jury selection was due to start on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., for Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, in what will be the first trial held in the US regarding the attack on 21 December 1988.
An order issued by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich did not elaborate on the nature of the newly revealed details. Al-Marimi’s legal team said prosecutors disclosed the evidence on Saturday, adding that their “constitutional and ethical obligations require the defense to investigate this development.”
A status hearing in Washington has been scheduled for 1 September to discuss the case.
Al-Marimi is charged in the US with building the bomb that destroyed the aircraft, killing 270 people, mostly Americans. Flight 103 was travelling from London Heathrow Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York when the device exploded in the forward cargo area 38 minutes after takeoff, 31,000 feet (9.45 kilometres) above Lockerbie.
The blast killed all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, where the wreckage destroyed an entire city 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.
Prosecutors allege Al-Marimi and others carried out the bombing at the direction of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, 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 U.S. 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.