One day after the defence team for the two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing suddenly announced that they had concluded their case and would not call in any more witnesses, prosecutors also declared on Tuesday that they were dropping two of three charges against the defendants. Only the murder charge would remain. This carries an automatic life sentence but is the most difficult to prove.
Mathematical certainty is neither necessary nor achievable.
They are said by prosecutors to have been working on behalf of Libyan intelligence. The defendants are accused of planting the bomb which exploded on 21 December 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew aboard PanAm flight 103 and 11 people on the ground when blazing debris rained down on Lockerbie in south-west Scotland. Clare Connolly, an expert in Scottish criminal law following the case, said the dropping of charges was surprising. The trial opened on 3 May last year at Camp Zeist, a former US base in the Netherlands where a special court is presiding under Scottish law. This special arrangement was reached as a compromise between Libya, on the one hand, and the United States and Britain, on the other.