More than 30 years on from Lockerbie bombing, first US trial faces delay

As the wreckage from Pan Am Flight 103 was being collected from across a small Scottish town, one phrase kept being repeated: "We do not know what happened."

The plane fell from more than 9 kilometres in the air, crashing into the town of Lockerbie and leaving lives, homes and communities in ruins.

The plane, flying from London to New York on December 21, 1988, simply vanished from radar screens. One moment there, gone the next.

"We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire," Mr Glasgow told the Daily News in 1988.

"There were no bodies about. I don't think there would be any chance … It went up in a fireball."

Fragments of a circuit board and timer were later found by investigators, and they established a bomb was placed inside a radio in a piece of luggage on the plane.

Authorities confirmed all 259 people on board were killed, along with 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.

Before the September 11 attacks of 2001, it was the deadliest terror attack in US history, with 190 Americans killed, and remains the deadliest in the United Kingdom.

The Lockerbie victims also included people from 21 different countries.

US and Scottish investigators have accused a total of three Libyan intelligence operatives since 1991.

One has been acquitted, another convicted, and the third now faces trial in the US, which comes more than two decades since the ruling in the first Lockerbie case.

The trial was scheduled to begin in late August but has been delayed after new evidence emerged.

In 2020, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, a former explosives expert for Libya's intelligence service, became the latest person charged with the Lockerbie bombing.

A 2012 interview Al-Marimi gave to Libyan law enforcement became a crucial piece of evidence for US and Scottish authorities when they obtained a copy in 2017.