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Heartbroken relatives of victims killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing said Wednesday they still plan to come face-to-face with one of the alleged terrorists behind the attack — even as his trial was suddenly delayed due to new evidence.
Some family members had hoped to “stare down” Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi — who’s charged with making the bomb that killed 259 people aboard Pan Am flight 103 and 11 people on the ground — as jury selection was set to begin Wednesday in Washington, DC, relatives told The Post.
But justice was put on hold after mysterious new evidence emerged, leaving loved ones with an unfinished chapter in the tragic, 37-year-old case.
“There are some family members that will stare at him — it brings them peace to stare him down,” said Kara Weipz, whose brother, Rick Monetti, was killed in the historic attack. “I don’t care to look at him.”
Monetti, a junior communications major, was among 35 Syracuse University students killed on the flight from London to New York City on Dec. 21, 1988.
Weipz —who had to cancel travel plans after the trial was delayed Monday — said Al-Marimi has previously come off disturbingly aloof at pre-trial hearings.
“He seems very calculating, in my opinion,” Weipz said. “It’s tough, it’s difficult being in the courtroom with him.”
“My purpose for going is to represent my family and learn more about the truth,” said Weipz, a New Jersey-based preschool teacher.
She called the delay the latest holdup in the long-simmering case.
“It’s a constant anxiety,” she said of her brother’s death and the ensuing legal battles — which included one conviction in 2001.
“It dredges it all up. You go through a roller coaster of emotions,” she said.
Prosecutors have alleged that Al-Marimi — a former Libyan intelligence agent now in his mid-70s —flew to Malta with a suitcase bomb to meet his co-conspirators, who instructed him to set a timer on the device ahead of the attack.
Al-Marimi and others allegedly carried out the bombing at the direction of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was ousted and killed during a 2011 civil war.
Weipz hopes the latest trial will answer more questions about what happened to her brother and why.
“[I want] a guilty verdict and to hold another person who played a part in his murder accountable,” she said.
“There’s no such thing as closure,” she said. “This pain doesn’t go away … The question is can you find more peace?”
The historic bombing killed a total of 270 victims, including 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie and 190 Americans.
It remains the second deadliest terror attack against Americans after 9/11, and the deadliest ever in the United Kingdom.
Aphrodite Tsairis’s 20-year-old daughter, Alexia, was also a Syracuse University student returning from an abroad program when she was killed by the bomb.
“We were left with holes in our hearts,” said Tsairis, 83, of New Jersey. “There will always be an empty seat at our table.”
Al-Marimi is one of three suspects ever charged in connection with the massacre.
In 2001, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were tried for their roles in the bombing by a panel of Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands.
The former was convicted, the latter was acquitted. In a bizarre twist, Fhimah’s death was announced Tuesday by Libyan Airlines, according to the BBC.
Tsairis called the timing of his death potentially telling, and speculated that it could be linked to the new evidence that delayed the trial.
“I’m wondering if there’s a connection,” she said. “Maybe he had a change of conscience before his death. Maybe he left a note.”
Tsairis had planned to take a train to the trial before it was delayed, likely until January.
“I’d like to see a conviction — but what I really want I can never have back,” she said of losing her daughter.
“My hope is that the trial is going to answer more of the ‘who and why.’ It puts a period at the end of the sentence,” she said.
“I think the world has to know the American justice system will follow you wherever you go.”
Al-Marimi now faces life in prison.
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