A court in the United States has decided to delay again, for the third time, the start of the trial against a Libyan citizen accused of being involved in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am plane with nearly 260 people on board when it was flying over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, after "new evidence" has been located in recent days.
A spokesperson for the Columbia district courts has indicated to Europa Press that the hearing is postponed without a new date "due to the discovery of new evidence that was not known until recently by any of the parties," without providing details about the content of that material.
The spokesperson added that "it is not unusual for trials to be postponed, and the Government is confident that this case will proceed successfully on the new trial date," although no specific timelines have been given to resume the process against the accused, Abú Agila Mohamed Masud Jeir al Marimi.
The defense of Al Marimi, who denies having assembled the bomb used in the attack on December 21, 1988 — in which all occupants of the aircraft died — claims that this evidence appeared on August 21, according to the British broadcaster BBC.
Al Marimi is identified as the "third conspirator" in the deadliest attack carried out in the United Kingdom, after the only person convicted for the attack, the deceased former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Alí Mohamed al Megrahi, and Lamin Jalifa Fhima, who was acquitted in 2001. The accused was made available to U.S. authorities in December 2022.
Washington requested Al Marimi's extradition in December 2020 to answer for the deaths of 169 American citizens traveling on the flight, and maintains that the defendant worked for Libyan intelligence, even as a technical specialist in the manufacture of explosive devices from approximately 1973 to 2011.
The U.S. government claims that Al Marimi acknowledged his involvement in the attack alongside Al Megrahi and Fhima during an interrogation at a Libyan detention center in 2012, a confession that now constitutes one of the key elements of the case. The accused, however, maintains that this statement is false and was obtained under duress.
The trial was supposed to begin in May 2025, but has already been postponed three times, including this last one. The attack has been under a joint investigation by U.S. and Scottish authorities for more than 35 years.
Laura Buchan, head of the Lockerbie investigation team at the Crown Office, has admitted that this new delay could be "disappointing" for the victims' families, although she has emphasized that "Scottish prosecutors and police remain fully committed to supporting the pursuit of justice."
Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London Heathrow Airport bound for New York. The attack caused 270 deaths —259 passengers and crew, in addition to eleven people on the ground hit by the plane's debris—.