The trial of a former Libyan intelligence officer accused of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 was postponed by a federal judge on Aug. 24, after defense attorneys produced new evidence.
Jury selection had been scheduled to begin on Aug. 26, in the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir al-Marimi in Washington, but U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said it would have to be delayed due to the latest discovery.
On Dec. 21, 1988, a bomb in a suitcase exploded on a Pan-Am Boeing 747 as it flew from London to New York. The explosion brought the plane down over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 people on board perished, along with 11 residents on the ground who were killed by debris.
Most of the passengers and crew were Americans.
Al-Marimi is alleged to have constructed the bomb that brought down the airliner.
Defense Cites ‘Ethical Obligations’
His legal team, led by Laura Koenig, an assistant federal public defender, said the prosecution disclosed new evidence in the case to them on Aug. 22 and that the “constitutional and ethical obligations require the defense to investigate this development.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Koenig for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
The judge, in her order, said the case was complex, and there was a “need for the defense to determine how best to defend this case.”
Friedrich scheduled a hearing on Sept. 1 to discuss the status of the case.
Al-Marimi, now in his mid-70s, faces a possible life sentence if convicted.
Prosecutors say he worked for the Libyan intelligence service from 1973 to 2011, when the Gaddafi regime collapsed and the dictator was killed.
Among those who died at Lockerbie were 35 students from Syracuse University in New York state, who were returning home from a semester in Europe.
Kara Weipz, whose brother Richard Monetti was among the Syracuse students who died, said the decision to delay al-Marimi’s trial was a shock as several victims’ relatives were preparing to head to Washington for the first hearing.
Weipz is also board president of nonprofit group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103.
“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.”
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (L), who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is welcomed by the son of Libyan leader Seif al-Islam Gadhafi (R) on his arrival at an airport in Tripoli, Libya, on Aug. 20, 2009. AP Photo
Two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged with the murder and faced a historic trial, which was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. In January 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted, but Fhimah was acquitted.
It was alleged at that trial that the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, had ordered the attack in revenge after the United States bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in 1986, killing his adopted baby daughter, Hana.
The U.S. bombing was itself retaliation for the April 1986 bombing of Berlin’s La Belle nightclub, which U.S. authorities attributed to Libyan agents. Two American soldiers were killed in the nightclub bombing.
Al-Megrahi died in Libya in 2012, three years after he was freed on compassionate grounds by the British government because he was said to be dying of cancer.
A police investigation found that Flight 103, which was bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport, blew up at 31,000 feet when a bomb in the plane’s forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after takeoff from London’s Heathrow Airport.
The Malta Connection
The bomb had been packed into a suitcase, which had been put on a connecting flight from Malta to Frankfurt in Germany. The suitcase was then transferred to Heathrow, where it was loaded onto the New York flight, even though there was no passenger accompanying it.
Investigators later traced clothing that had been packed around the bomb to a specific shop in Malta, and the shop owner, Tony Gauci, identified al-Megrahi as the person who bought the clothes.
In January 2021, a Scottish court rejected a posthumous appeal by al-Megrahi, which included among its grounds for appeal doubts about Gauci’s evidence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
