Judge postpones US trial for Libyan man charged over Lockerbie bombing

A federal judge on Monday postponed a trial in the US for a Libyan man charged over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, citing the discovery of new evidence that defence lawyers want to examine.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin on Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington, DC.

His trial is the first in the US for the December 21, 1988, bombing.

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 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. 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.

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.