The MEBO and Bollier saga continues

[A number of Swiss news websites are running a report about the refusal of a special federal prosecutor to pursue the complaint made by Edwin Bollier and MEBO against a former Swiss federal police officer. A translation of the report on the Blick website (by me, with help from Google Translate) reads as follows:]

The special Federal Prosecutor, Felix Bänziger, has declined to open a criminal investigation against a former federal police officer in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. The complaint had been filed by the Zurich businessman Edwin Bollier.

The timer for the bomb allegedly came from Bollier’s company. According to Bollier’s statement, an employee of his company, Mebo AG, illegally handed over a prototype of the relevant timer to an official of the federal police six months after the attack.

This prototype was then used to construct a "fabricated" production which was used in the Lockerbie trial process against Libya. A Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence officer in 2001 and sentenced him to life imprisonment. 270 people were killed in the attack in 1988.

In 2011 Bollier lodged a complaint against the former federal police officer. In March this year the Department of Justice (FOJ) issued an authorization to prosecute the officer who now works for the Federal Intelligence Service. Special prosecutor Felix Bänziger was commissioned to pursue the complaint.

Bänziger has now come to the conclusion that the alleged offences were already time-barred before receipt of Bollier’s complaint in 2011, the federal prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday.

"At the very latest, all the alleged facts could have been known during the trial before the Scottish High Court in 2000," it said in the release. All possible actions were therefore time-barred in 2010. Up to the year 2002 there was a limitation period of ten years for the prosecution of crimes.

Under the current law the prosecution of crimes is barred only after 15 years. However, the 10 year limitation period was the governing law at the time of the act, the federal prosecutor’s office notes. Bänziger’s decision not to pursue the complaint is not yet final. Edwin Bollier is still on the way to the Federal Criminal Court. [RB: And from there, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights, Mr Bollier has indicated.]

In May this year, the Federal Civil Court rejected a government liability claim made by Bollier. The claim in which Bollier sought from the state six million dollars plus interest, was held to have been made too late.

According to Bollier, because of the media reports on the alleged involvement of his company in the Lockerbie attack, he lost major clients and was driven to the brink of ruin.