[What follows is the text of a report just published on the website of the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National:]
The US judge overseeing the case of Lockerbie bombing suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Masud has set jury selection for April 20, 2026.
Judge Dabney Friedrich acknowledged the “complicated nature” and “voluminous discovery of evidence” in the case surrounding the 1988 attack that resulted in the explosion of a Pan Am flight and the deaths of 270 people in Scotland.
Mr Masud, 73, limped into court and donned headphones to listen to the status conference in Arabic. He looked straight ahead for the whole proceedings, never glancing at victims' families, who took up several rows of court seats.
He didn't appear to communicate with his court-appointed lawyer [RB: Whitney Minter] during proceedings. In 2023, Mr Masud pleaded not guilty in connection to one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in UK and US history.
Only one other person, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, has been convicted for the bombing. After his conviction in 2001, Megrahi spent seven years in a Scottish prison, but he was eventually released on compassionate grounds and died in Libya in 2012. In 2003, Libya claimed responsibility for the attack that brought down the plane. [RB: Libya did not "claim responsibility for the attack". It accepted "responsibility for the acts of its officials": https://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/08/libyan-august-2003-acceptance-of.html]
The US government filed charges against Mr Masud in 2020, but it took more than two years to extradite him from Libya. [RB: Masud was not extradited from Libya. He was abducted from his home by a local warlord and sold to US authorities who then transferred him to the United States without either his own consent or that of the judicial authorities of Libya.] Mr Masud's health problems, lawyer changes and logistical problems have caused the trial planning to move at a snail's pace.
A court transcript seen by The National show the methodical nature of the case. At least three depositions of foreign citizens will have to take place outside the US before the trial begins, according to the court transcript.
Though specifics are not disclosed, ways of potentially dealing with Mr Masud's health problems are also discussed. His court-appointed lawyers have promised to provide updates about his medical condition to better prevent any delays.
In court on Thursday, Judge Friedrich emphasised the need to stay on schedule. “I want this to be aggressive,” she said, referring to trial planning dates and schedule preparations.
Mr Masud's lawyer told the judge that although there is “some disagreement” about the extent of his medical problems, both defence and prosecutors are on the same page about how to deal with it going forward.
All 259 people on board the Pan Am flight died in the attack and 11 people were killed on the ground by falling debris on December 21, 1988, shortly after the plane took off from London bound for New York.
Of the victims, 190 were US citizens, along with people from the UK and Argentina, India, South Africa and Spain, among others.
[A report on the BBC News website contains the following:]
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." (...)
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."
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