The trial of a Libyan man accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 has been postponed for a third time, just days before it was due to begin. Jury selection had been scheduled to start on Wednesday in Washington DC, but the emergence of new evidence on 21 August prompted defence lawyers for Abu Agila Mohammad Kheir Al-Marimi to request — and receive — a delay. A new start date has been set for January 2026, meaning a verdict is unlikely before next spring.

Al-Marimi, a former colonel in Libyan intelligence who served in the service between 1973 and 2011, has been in US custody since December 2022. He is accused of manufacturing the bomb that brought down the Boeing 747 on 21 December 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board and 11 residents of Lockerbie whose homes were struck by falling wreckage. Of the 270 victims, 190 were American and 43 were British. The attack remains the deadliest terrorist attack and mass murder in British history. Defence lawyers told the court that prosecutors had informed them of the newly discovered evidence and that their "constitutional and ethical obligations" required them to investigate before proceeding. Federal judge Dabney Friedrich, who would have been reluctant to grant an eleventh-hour postponement after months of preparation and lengthy pre-trial legal battles, nonetheless agreed, underscoring the potential significance of what has emerged. The nature of the evidence has not been disclosed.

The case has its roots in a joint Scottish-US investigation that began immediately after the bombing. In 2000, two Libyan intelligence officers were tried before a specially convened Scottish court at Camp Zeist, a former US air force base in the Netherlands. One, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted of mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment; he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and died of cancer in 2012. The second defendant was acquitted. Al-Marimi's identity as the alleged bomb-maker remained unclear for years until he was detained in Libya following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's government. Libyan media have reported that he was abducted from his home in Tripoli, though US officials have not confirmed how he came to be transferred to American custody. The prosecution's central evidence includes an alleged confession Al-Marimi is said to have made to Libyan intelligence in 2012; he maintains it was false and extracted under duress, though the trial judge has ruled it admissible.

The postponement has been described as a blow to families who have waited nearly four decades for a full accounting. Kara Weibel, head of the victims' group Pan Am 103 Families, said the delay came as a shock and that some relatives had already been preparing to attend the trial in person. Yet she added a note of cautious acceptance: "We have been looking for the whole truth for almost 38 years, and if this development will help uncover and hear the full facts, then this delay is worth the wait." Scottish prosecutors and police officers, who had been due to travel to Washington to participate in the proceedings, reaffirmed their commitment to the case. Gaddafi's government paid more than two billion dollars in compensation to victims' families in 2008, but many relatives have long insisted that a criminal conviction addressing the full chain of responsibility was essential to achieving justice.