Investigators have made a potential breakthrough in the Lockerbie bombing case after finding DNA evidence from the suitcase used to carry the explosive.
Scientists are reported to have gathered genetic profiles from the suitcase lining and an umbrella packed into the luggage compartment of the doomed Pan Am Flight 103 after re-examining items salvaged from the wreckage in December 1988.
Prosecutors now hope to be able to link the profile to alleged bomb-maker Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, who is waiting to go on trial in the US, with the DNA to be compared to swabs taken from the suspect.
The Libyan, who is accused of playing a major role in what remains the UK’s worst terror atrocity that killed 270 people, was due to face a jury last month but the trial was postponed as a result of his poor health and the complexity of the case.
It is now not expected to begin until next spring.
The Sunday Times has reported that US court papers identify a list of expert witnesses for the prosecution, including Dr Nighean Stevenson, a leading authority in DNA analysis at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), who has re-examined exhibits from the crash site more than 30 years ago.
The papers state: ‘Dr Stevenson examined items relating to an umbrella and an item relating to the lining of a suitcase.
‘These items were examined using specialised lighting, and DNA samples were taken from each.
Part of the wreckage of a passenger jet that came down on Lockerbie in December 1988
Alleged bomb-maker Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, is waiting to go on trial in the US
The scenes of devastation in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988
‘The DNA profiles obtained from these items were of varying quality and were generally commensurate with the expectations of these items.’
They add: ‘Analysis of a DNA reference sample relating to the accused nominal [Masud] has yet to be carried out.
‘When a DNA profile relating to this individual has been generated, it will thereafter be compared to any suitable DNA profiles which have already been obtained.’
Masud, 74, is accused of making the bomb which brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, on December 21, 1988.
All 259 passengers and crew on board were killed along with 11 residents in the town when wreckage fell to the ground.
Masud, a bomb-maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation, was extradited to the US at the end of 2022 after allegedly confessing to building the Lockerbie bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta.
His defence team are set to argue that the confession was extracted in Libya under duress and is therefore inadmissible.
But Dick Marquise, the FBI special agent who led the US end of the original investigation said: ‘If you’ve got his DNA [in the suitcase]… it would knock down the building blocks of his potential defence.’
Mr Marquise told the publication he was not aware of any DNA evidence collected in the immediate aftermath of the bombing in 1988, adding: ‘It was much too new a science.’
Masud, who was taken into US custody in 2022, will be the first person accused of playing a part in the bombing to be tried in a US court.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi and co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fahima stood trial in a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands during 2000 and 2001.
Megrahi was found guilty of mass murder and sent to Scotland to serve his life. Fahima was acquitted and returned to Libya.
The Scottish Government released terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009, three years before he died of cancer.
