From U.S. v. Al-Marimi, decided last Monday by Judge Dabney Friedrich (D.D.C.):
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded 30,000 feet over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland. The indictment alleges that all 259 people aboard died—including citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Canada, Israel, Argentina, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Jamaica, Philippines, India, Belgium, Trinidad and Tobago, Japan, and Bolivia. It further alleges that debris from the explosion killed eleven townspeople instantly.
On November 29, 2022, the defendant Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, was … charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death … and one count of destruction of a vehicle used in foreign commerce by means of an explosive, resulting in death ….
On February 9, 2023, the government filed an unopposed motion for alternative procedures under the Crime Victims' Rights Act, requesting, among other things, that the Court establish a call-in telephone line so that victims could listen to the proceedings in real time. The Court denied the government's motion in relevant part, explaining that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibits the broadcasting of criminal court proceedings and that no statutory provision granted the Court authority to provide real-time telephonic access.
Thereafter, on January 26, 2024, Congress passed … [the] Lockerbie Victims Access Act …, which directs the Court to order that reasonable efforts be made to provide victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing with remote video and telephonic access to the proceedings in this case….
The court discusses all this in some detail (the opinion is over 8000 words long) and concludes:
