Jury selection was due to begin in Washington DC on Wednesday in the trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Kheir Al-Marimi, who was arrested in 2022 and accused of building the explosive device which brought the airliner down. He denies the charge.
His lawyers said “newly discovered evidence” had emerged on August 21 and requested a postponement.
Trial of alleged Lockerbie bomber delayed for a third time
A new date has not been set, with a hearing to take stock of the case fixed for September 1.
The nature of the evidence was not specified in the order from US District Judge Dabney Friedrich.
Kara Weipz, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, lost her brother Rick Monetti in the atrocity and said she was shocked to hear of the postponement.
She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme: “As we’re processing the shock, there’s a lot of, ‘I can’t believe this is happening’.
“There’s so much anxiety leading into this week and obviously with jury selection this week, and with the anticipation of opening statements next week, people were getting ready to travel at the end of the week – and then knowing that all of a sudden it’s not happening right now, it’s just we have to live in this anxiety for however long until we actually get to trial.
“And you know, everyone needs to stay healthy. You know, everything needs to fall into place. Everything still needs to work out right so that we can have this trial.”
What happened in the Lockerbie bombing?
All 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground were killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded above Lockerbie on December 21 1988, 40 minutes into its flight from London to New York.
Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only man convicted in relation to the bombing, after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges sitting at a special court in the Hague in 2001.
Prosecutors said he had not acted alone, but his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted and the Crown admitted it had been unable to “point to any specific route” by which the suitcase containing the bomb had been loaded onto the plane.
A number of people, including some of the victims’ families, believe that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted.
Clothing in the suitcase in which the bomb was planted was found to have been purchased at Mary’s House in Sliema, Malta and one of the owners, Tony Gauci, testified that he had sold clothes to a Libyan man around two weeks before Christmas.
He told investigators than the man had been ‘over 6ft’, where Megrahi was 5ft 8in, and that it had been raining when the man visited the shop.
Gauci ailed to consistently identify Megrahi and was later described by former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmville as “an apple short of a picnic”.
In their verdict the judges admitted that Guaci had not made “an absolutely positive identification” but concluded “his identification so far as it went… was reliable and should be treated as a highly important element in this case”.
Three men from the company which sold timers to Libya, Mebo, were described by the judges as “unreliable witnesses” with one, Edwin Bollier, accused of giving evidence which belonged to a “spy thriller”.
Abdulmajid Gialka, a former member of the Libyan security services, also testified and the judges found there were “a number of inconsistencies” with his account.
Megrahi was sent to prison in Scotland but was controversially granted compassionate release in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, returning home to Libya where he died in 2012.