THE trial of a Libyan man accused of making the Lockerbie bomb has been postponed just days before it was due to begin.
A US federal judge postponed the trial of Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi on Monday after new evidence emerged which defence lawyers want time to examine.
Jury selection had been due to begin in Washington DC on Wednesday.
The case is set to be the first US trial over the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order did not 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”.
The judge scheduled a September 1 hearing in Washington to discuss the status of the case.
Al-Marimi is charged in the US with making the bomb that downed the plane, killing 270 people, most of them Americans.
Flight 103 was 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, when a bomb in the plane’s forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after take-off from 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. Citizens of 21 countries were killed, including 190 Americans and 43 from the UK.
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.
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.
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.
Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges at 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.
Kara Weipz, board president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and whose brother Richard Monetti was among the Syracuse University students killed, said her organisation had received no details about the new evidence that prompted the trial delay.
She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme: “We’re processing the shock, there’s a lot of, ‘I can’t believe this is happening’.
“There was so much anxiety leading into this week and obviously with jury selection this week, and with the anticipation of opening statements next week, people were getting ready to travel at the end of the week – and then knowing that all of a sudden it’s not happening right now, it’s just we have to live in this anxiety for however long until we actually get to trial.
She added: “I was floored today when I found out, absolutely floored.”
However, she said that while the postponement has come as a surprise, the delay could be worth it if the evidence helps discover more of the truth.
She said: “We want the truth. We want to know what happened. And if that’s what this brings, then this time will be worth it.”
