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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The long wait for answers over the Lockerbie bombing grows longer
Major television productions are bringing the story of the Lockerbie bombing to a new global audience, but the real life drama of the trial of a new Libyan suspect has been delayed once more. Abu Agila Mohammed Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi, known as Masud, had been due to face a Washington jury last month, accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 and killed 270 people. The 12 May starting date was abandoned because of problems with his health and the complexity of the case, and the trial is now scheduled to start in April, 2026.. The date was set at the District of Columbia District Court, where Masud listened with the help of a translator and was expressionless throughout. After the hearing, relatives of American victims of the bombing told BBC News of their disappointment that the trial is now scheduled to start 50 weeks later than originally planned. Kara Weipz is the president of the US group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and lost her 20-year-old brother Richard Monetti on the plane. "I'm just going to pray that it stays at 20 April," she said. "I was 15 when this happened, and I'm 52 now and among the relatives I'm considered young. "A lot of our family members are in their seventies and eighties and unfortunately, we lose them weekly or monthly now. "The travesty in all of this that they're not seeing the justice that they've worked 37 years to see. "That's what concerns us the most, that this trial will come around and we'll have lost more family members." Victoria Cummock's husband John was coming home from a business trip to Europe a day earlier than planned, to surprise his family. The founder of the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Legacy Foundation, Mrs Cummock said: "We've lived through 36 years of delays and postponements simply because this is an international case filled with politics. "Thirty six years with seven different administrations in America have really collided with the families' search for accountability and justice. "It's no surprise that our mission to hold them to account is being delayed." Mrs Cummock added she was concerned that President Trump's ban on Libyan citizens travelling to the US could affect the trial. She said: "It just seems like it's a very slow journey to getting this case started." Masud has been in US custody since December 2022 and has pled not guilty to the charges. The Tunisian-born Libyan is in his seventies and is understood to have diabetes and heart problems. His family in Libya has already expressed concerns over the delays to the case, saying he's an innocent man. The new trial date was fixed after a joint motion submitted by the prosecution and the defence, both of whom raised the international nature of the evidence and witnesses. A series of crucial legal arguments will have to be resolved before the trial can go ahead, with the judge Dabney Friedrich describing the 20 April date as "tentative." Those will include the admissibility of a confession Masud is alleged to have made while in custody in 2012, following the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi's regime. Another complication is the fact that new information on the case is still emerging, almost four decades after the attack. A book published in France revealed the existence of documents said to have been retrieved from the archives of the Libyan intelligence service, of which Masud is alleged to have been a member. If proved genuine, those documents detail his involvement in preparations for the attack on Pan Am 103. It's more than 24 years since the first Lockerbie trial, when three Scottish judges convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdulbasset al-Megrahi of playing a key role in the plot. Megrahi was jailed for life but released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died three years later at home in Tripoli. His release infuriated many of the American relatives, which is why they have set so much store on the trial of Masud, the first suspect to face an American court over Lockerbie. They believe it will deliver the justice they were denied by the Scottish legal system. The bombing remains the worst terror attack in British history and claimed the lives of 43 UK citizens. Some, but not all, of the British relatives have never accepted the verdict against Megrahi, including the Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga was on the plane. "I think they're just waiting for people like me to pop our clogs and get out of the way," he said. "I'm still pretty cynical about the whole thing. I would like to be proved wrong but I can't see it happening. "As far as I'm concerned, who made the bomb and who put in on the plane are secondary as to who were the main criminals. "They were the group of people who had all the warnings that this was going to happen and warned their own people but didn't warn the public." The big budget television dramas may have pushed the Lockerbie bombing back into the public eye but it's clear that there's a very long way to go before a jury delivers its verdict on Masud. Judge Friedrich warned that if things are not done in a timely manner, there's a risk the trial could "slip" into 2027. As she reminded everyone in the court: "This isn't a normal criminal case." Lockerbie bombing trial delayed until next year New documents blame Libya for Lockerbie bombing 'My brother died in Lockerbie - our story changed how air disasters are handled'
The Guardian
16-02-2025
- The Guardian
‘You don't see the trauma until suddenly you do': Lockerbie bombing's lasting impact on a ‘normal little town'
At the end of a row of tidy red brick bungalows in the Scottish town of Lockerbie is an empty plot, carefully landscaped now as a memorial garden. Two red tartan ribbons, tied on a leafless branch perhaps in private remembrance, flutter in a wintry gust. Eleven of the street's residents died when the wing section of Pan Am 103 crashed into Sherwood Crescent with the force of a meteorite on 21 December 1988, gouging a 30-foot crater on this spot. The impact was such that some bodies were never recovered. This once anonymous street was recreated in meticulous detail for the filming of the Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which was first screened last month and stars Oscar winner Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed when a bomb exploded on the Pan Am flight from London bound for New York. Although the drama has been widely praised, some relatives of the 270 people who lost their lives in what remains the UK's deadliest terrorist atrocity have questioned the need for such graphic depictions of the immediate aftermath. A spokesperson for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group described it as 'tragedy porn' to the Hollywood news site Deadline while, closer to home, a Lockerbie resident who lost her sister and brother-in-law wrote in the Annandale Herald: 'I don't need to be reminded about the terrible scene that night.' But for a generation born after 1988, this series may be their first exposure to the tangle of legal proceedings, conspiracy theories and international controversy that has become synonymous with the name of one small town in the south of Scotland. With a second dramatisation airing on BBC One and Netflix later this year, a new BBC Scotland documentary, and the trial of the alleged bomb-maker starting in the US in May, Lockerbie is likely to remain in the spotlight this year, willingly or otherwise. 'It's the most normal little town in the world,' says the Rev Frances Henderson, minister at Lochmaben and Lockerbie Churches, 'with a strong community, and people are just living their lives.' 'You don't see the trauma until suddenly you do. It's there, being carried and dealt with, a trauma that is part of their lives and has shaped the last decades.' Henderson has not watched the Colin Firth series herself: 'Not because I object to it but because I feel I'd have to psyche myself up to it. 'I think most people feel it's been done respectfully but neither have I heard of many watching it because it's too real. For those who weren't there, who may be too young to remember, it's perhaps useful, but not for those who were there.' The Sky Atlantic series was based on Swire's investigations into the bombing. He and many supporters have argued consistently for the innocence of Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder. Swire believes al-Megrahi, who was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after a diagnosis of terminal cancer and died in 2011 in Tripoli, was framed to deflect attention from Iranian and Syrian responsibility. This is rejected as conspiracy theory by US victims' relatives, who criticised the series for misrepresenting the trial and portraying al-Megrahi as 'an innocent man that should be empathised with'. Swire and other UK relatives continue to demand a public inquiry into the failure to take seriously or make public warnings that an attack on a Pan Am flight was imminent, while in May, another Libyan, 72-year-old Abu Agila Masud, will go on trial in Washington, accused of building the bomb that brought down the flight. He denies all charges. 'There has been so much written about the trial and various conspiracy theories, but no one has ever spoken to me about any of that as a constituent,' says Colin Smyth, Scottish Labour MSP for the region. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'People of Lockerbie didn't choose for their town to be known for this, but they took their responsibility to the victims very seriously from the first night – like the couple who found a young man in their field and didn't want to leave him so stood vigil until dawn, or the man who scooped up the body of a toddler and drove them into town so they weren't left in the cold and wet.' 'For decades they have welcomed people with open arms as the families of the victims continue to visit their loved ones' last resting place. Those relationships have sustained – you hear of relatives staying at family homes in Lockerbie even now.' Those relationships are woven through the generations, thanks to the enduring scholarship programme between Lockerbie Academy and Syracuse University, New York, which lost 35 students in the disaster. This Saturday Lori Carnochan, chair of Tundergarth Kirks Trust, took another group of Syracuse students around the church and memorial room to the east of the town, where the plane's nose cone came to rest. 'Visitors have this image in their head of Lockerbie and they're all so pleasantly surprised – it's not a sombre place. It's a thriving, vibrant community, full of positivity and life, a fantastic place to raise a family.' Carnochan is leading plans to create a legacy museum at Tundergarth: 'Children and young people need to understand the significance of the worst terrorist attack ever to have happened in the UK and the impact it had not only here in Lockerbie but all over the world, the changes that came about in aviation security and safety because of it.' 'It's so important for them to learn about the incredible acts of loving humanity by the people of Lockerbie in the aftermath, like the women who washed and distributed 11,000 items of personal artefacts and clothing back to the families that otherwise would have been destroyed. 'It's a very difficult thing for many in the town to have to live with – it's widely known many people here have some form of PTSD because of the attack, yet they still open their hearts and homes in the way that they did 36 years ago.'
