[The following are two entries for this date in 2000 on the Libya: News and Views news aggregation website:]
The co-owner of a Swiss firm suspected of supplying a timer for the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 told the Lockerbie trial on Tuesday circuit board fragments found by investigators may have been tampered with. Prosecutors say one of the timers sold by Swiss firm Mebo set off the fireball that demolished the airliner in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. “They have been modified, I swear they have been modified,” Mebo co-owner Edwin Bollier said after peering through a magnifying glass at charred fragments from a circuit board prosecutors said was found among the debris of the Boeing 747. Bollier said his firm did not necessarily supply the timer and the fragments could have come from counterfeit copies. [Reuters]
The defense in the Lockerbie bombing trial Monday accused the co-owner of a Swiss firm said to have supplied a timer used in the explosion of covering up a possible link with Palestinian terrorists. Prosecutors say a timer sold by the Swiss firm Mebo to Libya triggered the 1988 explosion that downed Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people. But the defense pointed the finger at Palestinians with links with former communist East Germany's Stasi secret police. Mebo co-owner Erwin Meister acknowledged under intense cross examination that Mebo had a long history of supplying espionage equipment to the Stasi and sold timers to East Germany as well as to Libya. Meister also conceded that he and business partner Edwin Bollier did not tell police investigators during initial questioning that they had supplied timers to the Stasi. But he said that was just an oversight. “You concealed from the authorities that Mebo had supplied MST timers to the Stasi,” defense lawyer David Burns told Meister. “That is why you accused Libya, to deflect attention away from the PLFP-GC.” [CNN]
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