Reeling from five days of merciless questioning, a businessman, Mr Edwin Bollier, left the Lockerbie witness box yesterday to end the most sensational week yet of the airliner bombing trial.
Co-owner of the Swiss firm that allegedly made the timer used in the 1988 blast over Scotland, Mr Bollier had been billed as the hostile prosecution witness who could smash the case against the two Libyans. But his court stint - the longest witness appearance since the trial began on May 3rd - saw him mauled by prosecution and defence alike, branded a liar and a Stasi collaborator.
"The fact is you are mired completely in a web of deceit and cunning and lies of your own invention, and when you come out with `mystery men' or agents pro- vocateurs it is merely an attempt to excuse your own inexcusable behaviour," said Mr Richard Keen, defending, yesterday. Mr Bollier had testified that he wrote to the US Central Intelligence Agency implicating Libya shortly after the Lockerbie bombing, but had done so at the behest of a "mystery man" secret service agent. Mr Bollier's firm, Mebo, is central to the murder case against Mr Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Mr Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima.
Not only did Mebo sell timers to Libya, but Mr Megrahi also used its premises to house a fake business that was a cover for Libyan intelligence services, the indictment states.