Lawyers for the man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people in the 1988 Lockerbie air disaster have been granted a delay to the start of the trial.
On Monday, Washington District Judge Dabney Friedrich granted Abu Agila Al Marimi's court-appointed lawyer's request for more time to review evidence to be presented against his client
Jury selection for Mr Al Marimi's trial was tentatively scheduled to begin on August 25, but as pre-trial hearings continued last week it was clear that deadline would not be met.
In 1988, all 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 died in the terrorist attack. Eleven others were killed on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, by falling debris from the explosion.
It occurred shortly after the Pan Am flight took off from London on December 21. Of the 270 victims, 190 were US citizens.
About 150 pieces of crash evidence will be presented, along with accounts of witnesses from several countries. Evidence will also come in the form of passports, hotel records, receipts, telegrams, baggage tags and letters.
Many of those documents come from Libya, the UK, the US, Malta, and what was then known as Czechoslovakia.
Adding to the buzz around the case has been the release of a six-part series by Netflix titled The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. It portrays the events leading up to the incident and the investigation into it. The series ranks among Netflix’s top 10 TV shows in the US.
Mr Al Marimi was first charged in 2020 and taken into US custody in 2022, but health issues, defence team problems and long pre-trial deliberations have delayed the trial.
Only one person, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, has been convicted of the bombing. Al Megrahi died in 2012.
