MICHAEL HOWIEHOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (mhowie@scotsman.com)
A WITNESS in the Lockerbie case has claimed he was offered $4 million (£2 million) by American investigators to lie to the trial judges.
Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company MEBO that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, claims he was offered the money by the FBI at its Washington HQ in exchange for making a statement that supported the main line of inquiry - that Libya was responsible for the bombing.
He has told Dr Hans Koechler, who was a UN observer during the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in the Netherlands, that he was offered a "new life" in the United States if he testified that the timer found in the plane wreckage had been supplied to Libya.
"I rejected this and said this could not possibly be the case," he said. He added that there was a "loud dispute" after he rejected the offer.
The claim follows news that the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose evidence led to Megrahi's conviction, was offered $2 million by the CIA.
