Judge postpones US trial for Libyan man charged in 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday postponed a trial in the U.S. for a Libyan man charged in 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, citing the discovery of new evidence that defense attorneys want to examine.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington, D.C. His trial is the first in the U.S. for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order didn’t specify the nature of the newly discovered evidence.

Al-Marimi, a former Libyan intelligence official, is charged in the U.S. with making the bomb that downed the airplane, killing 270 people, most of them Americans.

Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges on a former U.S. military base in the Netherlands in 2000. The tribunal convicted one official and acquitted the other, but the bombmaker’s possible identity remained a mystery for years.