Erwin Meister is a Swiss businessman who, with his partner Edwin Bollier, formed the company Mebo Telecommunications in 1969. They bought a Norwegian freighter, renamed it Mebo II , and converted it into an offshore radio station. [1]
The Swiss are the citizens of Switzerland or people of Swiss ancestry.
Edwin Bollier and his partner, Erwin Meister, founded Mebo Telecommunications AG in Zürich, Switzerland in 1969.
Mebo Telecommunications AG is owned by Swiss businessmen Erwin Meister and Edwin Bollier.
Mebo II operated off the coasts of the Netherlands and England from 1970 to 1974, when it broadcast as Radio North Sea International (RNI). After both countries having enacted legislation outlawing the supply of offshore radio stations, Meister and Bollier leased the RNI vessel to Libya in 1977. [2]
The Netherlands is a country located mainly in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba—it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
Radio North Sea International was a European offshore radio station run by the Swiss firm Mebo Telecommunications, jointly owned by Swiss engineer Edwin Bollier and his business partner, Erwin Meister. RNI broadcast for less than five years in the early 1970s and, courting both disaster and success, made a modest financial profit.
Because a Mebo timing device was alleged to have been used to trigger the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988 killing 270 people, Erwin Meister was summoned to give evidence in week 8 of the Lockerbie trial. [3]
Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew – a disaster known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people on the ground. With a total of 270 people killed, it is the deadliest terror attack in the history of the United Kingdom.
Lockerbie is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, south-western Scotland. It lies approximately 75 miles (121 km) from Glasgow, and 20 miles (32 km) from the English border. It had a population of 4,009 at the 2001 census. The town came to international attention in December 1988 when the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed there following a terrorist bomb attack aboard the flight.
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain, with a border with England to the southeast, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast, the Irish Sea to the south, and more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
Scheveningen[ˈsxeːvənɪŋə(n)](
Radio London, also known as Big L and Wonderful Radio London, was a top 40 offshore commercial station that operated from 23 December 1964 to 14 August 1967, from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England.
Pirate radio exists in most countries in Europe.
Radio Veronica was an offshore radio station that began broadcasting in 1960, and broadcast from offshore for over fourteen years. It was set up by independent radio, TV and household electrical retailers in the Netherlands to stimulate the sales of radio receivers by providing an alternative to the Netherlands state-licensed stations in Hilversum.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was a Libyan who was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, Libya, and an alleged Libyan intelligence officer. On 31 January 2001, Megrahi was convicted, by a panel of three Scottish judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty and was acquitted.
The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, 11 years, 4 months and 13 days after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. The 36-week trial took place at a specially convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands set up under Scots law and held at a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist near Utrecht.
The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 began at 19:03 on December 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The perpetrators had intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but the late departure time of the aircraft meant that its explosion over land left a veritable trail of evidence. The investigation led to the prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories suggest a number of possible explanations for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000–2001 trial; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.
RNI may refer to:
Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never actually became illegal, although after the Marine Offences Act (1967) it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.
Radio Nordsee International may refer to:
Radio Northsea International may refer to:
USS Density (AM-218) was an Admirable-class minesweeper built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She was built to clear minefields in offshore waters, and served the Navy in the Pacific Ocean.
The Mebo II was originally the Dutch freighter, "Silvretta", built in 1948 by De Groot en van Vliet, Slikkerveer. It had a weight of 630 tons and a length of 186 feet. In 1969, it was bought by Edwin Bollier and Erwin Meister, renamed and converted into an offshore radio station at the same shipyard where it had been built. It was famous for its dramatic art nouveau color scheme.
Hendrik "Bull" Verweij was one of the founders of the Dutch offshore radio station Radio Veronica, and was president of the station from its founding in 1959 until 1975. He was born in Hilversum. After Veronica was forced to stop, one of the DJ's of the station, Rob Out, formed the Veronica Omroep Organisatie: a legal entity that grew out from a candidate broadcasting organisation to the largest broadcaster in the country.
Voice of Free Libya is the name used by three radio stations aligned to the anti-Gaddafi forces that began broadcasting in February 2011, operating from the cities of Benghazi, Bayda and Misrata. They played an important role in the Libyan Civil War and have continued to broadcast after the fall of Gaddafi.
Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission stemmed from the dispute between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Libya concerning arrangements for the trial of two Libyans accused of causing the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.