US Judge Delays Trial of Libyan Suspect in Pan Am 103 Bombing

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has delayed the trial of a Libyan man accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, after defense attorneys said they needed time to examine newly discovered evidence.

Jury selection had been scheduled to begin Wednesday for Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, a former Libyan intelligence official. The postponement was ordered by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, whose ruling did not disclose the nature of the new material.

The case marks the first time anyone has faced trial in an American courtroom for the December 21, 1988, attack, which killed all 259 people aboard the aircraft and 11 more on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland — 270 victims in total, most of them U.S. citizens.

Al-Marimi is charged with making the explosive device that brought down the Boeing 747. The bombing had long been linked to Libyan operatives, but the identity of the bombmaker remained unclear for years.

In 2000, two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried before a panel of Scottish judges sitting on a former U.S. military base in the Netherlands. That tribunal convicted one man and acquitted the other, but it did not resolve the question of who actually assembled the bomb.

No new trial date has been announced. The delay gives the defense time to review the recently surfaced evidence before proceedings move forward.