Lockerbie Plane Crash Wreckage Lies In Warehouse. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
The long-awaited US trial of the Libyan man accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie will begin in January.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich confirmed on Monday that jury selection in the trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi will begin in Washington DC on 19 January 2027.
The date brings forward movement to a case which has repeatedly been delayed, most recently just days before proceedings were due to begin in August.
Judge Friedrich made clear that she does not intend to allow another postponement, telling the court: “The defendant and the public and the victims have waited a long time for this trial.”
Masud, a former Libyan intelligence operative who is now in his mid-70s, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death.
US prosecutors allege that he constructed and prepared the bomb which brought down the Boeing 747 as it flew from London Heathrow to New York on 21 December 1988.
All 259 passengers and crew on board were killed, along with 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie. Of the 270 victims, 190 were American and 43 were British.
The Washington trial will be the first criminal trial in the United States directly arising from the Lockerbie bombing.
Jury selection had been due to begin in Washington on 26 August, but proceedings were dramatically postponed after previously undisclosed evidence emerged shortly before the start of the trial.
Defence lawyers argued that they needed additional time to investigate the material and consider how it affected their case.
The precise nature of the evidence has still not been made public. The court was told on Monday that the new material involves one additional witness.
At an earlier hearing in September, Judge Friedrich had indicated that she wanted jury selection to begin on 19 January, but the date had not at that stage been formally confirmed.
Preparations have also had to take account of Ramadan, which is expected to begin in early February and will be observed by several prosecution witnesses. The case is expected to last for around two months.
Masud was brought to the United States from Libya in December 2022 and appeared in federal court in Washington the following day.
US authorities had first announced charges against him in December 2020 following decades of investigation by American and Scottish law enforcement.
Prosecutors allege that Masud worked for Libya’s External Security Organization and was a technical specialist in explosive devices.
A central part of the prosecution case is an alleged statement Masud gave while in Libyan custody in 2012 in which US authorities say he admitted involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
His lawyers have challenged the circumstances in which the statement was obtained and argued that it was made under duress. In August, Judge Friedrich rejected an attempt to have the statement suppressed, allowing portions of it to be used by prosecutors at trial.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi remains the only person to have been convicted over the bombing.
He was found guilty of 270 counts of murder by three Scottish judges at a specially convened court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.
Megrahi was imprisoned in Scotland before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. He returned to Libya and died in 2012.
Scottish prosecutors have consistently maintained that Megrahi did not act alone, and Scottish investigators and prosecutors have continued to work with US authorities on the investigation.
The prosecution of Masud means a jury will now hear evidence relating to the bombing more than 38 years after the destruction of Flight 103.