A federal judge on Monday postponed a trial in the United States for a former Libyan intelligence official charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, citing the discovery of new evidence that defense attorneys want to examine in the nearly 40-year-old case. Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi is charged in the U.S. with making the bomb that downed the airplane, killing 270 people, most of them Americans. Jury selection was scheduled to begin Wednesday for his federal trial in Washington, D.C. — the first trial in the U.S. for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing.
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 defense to investigate this development." Defense attorney Laura Koenig, an assistant federal public defender, declined to elaborate in response to an inquiry. The judge scheduled a Sept. 1 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 defense to determine how best to defend this case" as reasons to postpone the trial. Flight 103 was 31,000 feet over Lockerbie when a bomb in the plane's forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after takeoff 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 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. The FBI says that, prior to 9/11, the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing "was one of the world's most lethal acts of air terrorism and one of the largest and most complex acts of international terrorism ever investigated" by the agency. Kara Weipz, board president of the nonprofit Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said her organization 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.
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