Netherlands, June 20: A Swiss firm said to have supplied a timer used in the Lockerbie bombing had a history of dealing with former communist East Germany as well as Libya, the co-owner of the company said today.Erwin Meister of Mebo Ltd said under cross-examination at the murder trial of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima his company sold many timers to East Germany's Stasi and he made numerous trips to deliver equipment to the secret service.The prosecution argues that the two Libyans working as intelligence agents were responsible for the 1988 mid-air bombing that killed 270 people.Possibly undermining the prosecution case, Meister admitted he had a bad memory and that his identification on Friday of one of the Libyan accused might be from seeing so many press photos of the man rather than from his own recollection.Meister on Friday pointed out Megrahi in the courtroom, saying he recognised him from several meetings in Libya and Zurich before the 1988 bombing.Megrahi and Fahima are on trial in a special Scottish court in the Netherlands for the killing of 259 people aboard the flight and 11 on the ground in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.``Certainly there was a connection with the pictures in the press,'' Meister said under insistent questioning by defence lawyer David Burns. Meister said his identification was also helped by knowing where Megrahi was supposed to be sitting in the courtroom.Meister also acknowledged he had difficulty remembering details about the 1985 sale by his company to Libya of 20 sample timers with an MST-13 circuit board - the type that prosecutors have linked to the attack.Meister repeated several times that he had a bad memory. ``It's a problem I've had for quite some time and it's getting worse,'' he said.The defence is expected to argue that an explosive was loaded on to Pan Am 103 in Frankfurt by Palestinian guerrillas, not from a connecting flight originating in Malta, as the prosecution maintains.Meister first said he had only visited East Germany once, but then agreed that he made numerous trips to deliver equipment to the Stasi, including a lie-detector and a pager that scrambled messages into code.Mebo had sold around 15 timers to East Germany before 1985 and supplied several more in late 1985, but Meister insisted the timers sold in 1985 were different from the ones sold to Libya.Burns challenged Meister on the point, saying the circuit boards were the same kind as those sold to Tripoli, but Meister insisted the boards sold to East Germany were prototypes made by hand.Prosecutors accuse Megrahi and Fahima of using their positions as Libyan airlines employees to plant a suitcase with a bomb hidden in a radio cassette onboard the plane. The Libyans deny the charges.
