Lockerbie Trial Postponed Again

A Scottish judge ruled that two Libyans suspected of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, will stand trial on conspiracy charges, but he postponed the trial until May to give the defense more time to prepare. In a significant victory for the prosecution, Ranald Sutherland, the presiding judge at a special court in the Netherlands, rejected a defense motion that the conspiracy-to-murder charges be dropped because the bombing that killed 270 people on Dec. 21, 1988, had not been planned on Scottish soil. When “a crime of the utmost gravity has been conspired abroad, it appears to me quite illogical to say that we cannot put the conspirators on trial in Scotland, even though the conspiracy has been entered into abroad,” he said. The trial, already postponed from August to February, will be delayed until May 3.