Trial delayed for man charged in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing that killed 270 people
Paul Hudson, whose daughter Melina was one of the victims in the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie bombing, holds up a banner of pictures of additional victims outside the federal court before the trial of a Libyan man accused of making the bomb that destr
The trial for the man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people when it exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 has been delayed to allow defense attorneys time to examine evidence revealed to them over the weekend.
Big picture view:
Attorneys for Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi told the judge that the prosecutors told them about the new evidence on Saturday, and they needed time to investigate it. The order from U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich did not indicate what the evidence was, and defense attorney Laura Koenig did not give any further details when asked by The Associated Press.
What's next:
Jury selection for Al-Marimi, who is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death, had been set to start on Wednesday. Instead, a hearing was scheduled for next Tuesday, at which time the judge and attorneys for both sides will discuss the status of the case, which will be the first one held on U.S. soil in connection with the bombing.
The backstory:
On December 21, 1988, the Pan Am flight was flying at 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, when a bomb in the front cargo area exploded. The aircraft had departed from London’s Heathrow Airport just 38 minutes earlier and was bound for New York.
All 259 passengers aboard the flight, 190 of whom were from the United States, and 11 more people on the ground died as a result of the bombing.
Dig deeper:
Prosecutors allege Al-Marimi, who had worked for Libyan intelligence from around 1973 to 2011 and is now in his mid-70s, took a suitcase containing the bomb to a Malta airport and gave it to co-conspirators headed to Frankfurt, Germany. Investigators believe those individuals took the bomb to England, where it was loaded onto the Pan Am flight.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from The Associated Press. This story was reported from Orlando.