A rchive Date
[ 04-02-2001 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Libya ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis.html
A saga of crime, intrigue and revenge bombings
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
February 4, 2001
June, 1987: Libya's "Leader," Moammar Khadafy, took me by the hand and led me through the wreckage of his former bedroom in the Bab Azizya Barracks. A gaping hole in the ceiling showed where an American 1,000-lb. laser-guided bomb had crashed through. Broken rafters and debris clogged the room.
Khadafy's grip on my hand tightened. He pointed to a broken bed, with a bloodstained cover. "That was where my 2-year old adopted daughter was killed by the Americans," Khadafy whispered to me, his face contorted into a mask of pain and anger. "If I hadn't been in my tent in the garden, they would have killed me, too." Khadafy stood transfixed, staring at the bed. It seemed as if he were hearing distant voices from somewhere far away...
Last Wednesday, a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence agent of murdering 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A second Libyan was found not guilty. The biggest mass murder trial in British history was over.
Libya continued to deny any link to the crime, insisting rogue intelligence agents were responsible, and called for "a close to this chapter." President George W. Bush vowed sanctions against Libya would continue, which cost Tripoli US$3.5 billion annually, until Libya admitted guilt and paid reparations to the families of the 189 Americans who died.
This saga of crime and intrigue began in 1986. The U.S., Britain, and France were furious at Khadafy for raising oil prices and financing anti-western revolutionary groups. The Americans had elbowed the British out of oil-rich Libya in 1969 and put a Bedouin officer, Col. Khadafy, in power. But the mercurial, increasingly eccentric colonel quickly came to bedevil the Americans.
Tripoli became a mecca for every sort of Third World revolutionary group. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a defector from Israel's secret service, Mossad, Israel decided to mount a brilliant operation designed to further discredit Libya, and provoke the U.S. to attack an Arab nation. A transmitter loaded with pre-recorded messages was allegedly planted in Tripoli by a Mossad team.
The "Trojan Horse" beamed out fake messages about bombings and planned attacks that were immediately intercepted by U.S. electronic monitoring. Convinced by this disinformation that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which a U.S. soldier died, then-president Ronald Reagan ordered massive air attacks on Libya, including an obvious - and illegal - attempt to assassinate Khadafy. Some 100 Libyan civilians were killed, including Khadafy's daughter. A year later, senior Libyan officials told me they still could not understand why they were attacked.
Two years later, a bomb destroyed Pan Am 103. This attack was almost certainly revenge for the 1986 bombing of Libya and the death of Khadafy's child. Whether Khadafy or subordinates ordered the revenge attacks is unknown, but the Scottish court has now established the criminal link.
Undeclared war
During the 1970s and '80s, France and Libya had waged an undeclared war over Chad, a Saharan nation rich in oil and uranium. French Foreign Legionnaires, disguised as Chadian tribesmen, finally drove out the Libyan forces. But the French were so enraged at Khadafy over his trouble-making in French-dominated West Africa, that President Mitterrand ordered his spy service, SDECE, to assassinate the Libyan leader. At least two attempts were made. In one, a senior French intelligence officer who led the operation told me SDECE agents planted an altitude-triggered bomb aboard Khadafy's personal jet. The bomb was later removed when relations between Paris and Tripoli improved.
In 1989, a DC-10 of the French African carrier UTA blew up over Niger, killing 170 aboard. This crime clearly appeared to be revenge for France's efforts to assassinate Khadafy. Around the same time, three CIA attempts to murder Khadafy using Libyan exiles failed dismally. Britain's MI6 also tried to assassinate Khadafy by using a car bomb, a botched attack that killed scores of civilians.
French prosecutors went after Libya for the UTA attack. Curiously, they were allowed to go through the files of Libyan intelligence in Tripoli. Just before, I had dined in Tripoli with Abdullah Senoussi, No. 2 of Libyan intelligence. A charming and intelligent man, he denied any links to the bombing, but suggested Iranian involvement.
In 1999, a French anti-terrorist court found Senoussi and five other Libyan agents guilty of murder in the UTA bombing and sentenced them, in absentia, to life in prison. Libya admitted responsibility for the crime and paid US$31 million compensation to families of the victims. A year later, another French court ruled Khadafy could be prosecuted in France for the UTA bombing. The court held that heads of state have no immunity from crimes of terrorism.
The West wants Libya's high-quality oil and seems prepared to forget the matter once small-fry are jailed and reparations paid. This should not be. France's courts showed the way by demanding indictment of the senior officials who ordered these terrible crimes that should be neither forgiven nor forgotten.
But the U.S., Britain, and France also have embarrassing skeletons in their Libyan closet they'd prefer to keep hidden. Better to kiss, make up and get back to business as usual.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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