Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing Investigation - Mebo

Mebo

Investigators discovered that Mebo stood for Meister & Bollier, an electronics firm in Zürich, Switzerland. It emerged at the trial that one of the owners, Edwin Bollier, had sold twenty MST-13 timers (identical to the one found in Senegal) to Libya in 1985, in the hope of winning a contract to supply the Libyan military. The first time he supplied a batch of timers he had accompanied Libyan officials to the desert city of Sabha, and had watched as his timers were used in explosions. He told the court that he had met Megrahi on that occasion for the first time, believing him to be a major in the Libyan army and a relative of Gaddafi's. After that meeting, Bollier said that Megrahi and his co-accused, Fhimah, who he believed were good friends, had set up a travel business together under the name ABH in the Mebo offices in Zürich. Fhimah later went onto to become the station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa Airport in Malta. (Fhimah has acknowledged he worked for the airline but says he left the job three months before the bombing.)

Bollier testified at the trial that the Scottish police had originally shown him a fragment of a brown 8-ply circuit board, of a prototype timer which had never been supplied to Libya. Yet the sample he was asked to identify at the trial was a green 9-ply circuit board that Mebo had indeed supplied to Libya. Bollier wanted to pursue this discrepancy, but was told by trial Judge, Lord Sutherland, that he could not do so.

On July 18, 2007 Mebo's electronics engineer, Ulrich Lumpert, admitted he had given false evidence about the timer at the trial. In a sworn affidavit before a Zurich notary, Lumpert stated that he had stolen a prototype MST-13 timer PC-board from Mebo and gave it without permission on June 22, 1989, to "an official person investigating the Lockerbie case". Dr Hans Köchler, UN observer at the Lockerbie trial, who was sent a copy of Lumpert's affidavit, said: "The Scottish authorities are now obliged to investigate this situation. Not only has Mr Lumpert admitted to stealing a sample of the timer, but to the fact he gave it to an official and then lied in court".