Libya to pay for nightclub bomb
2003-08-16 17:14
Hamburg - Libya has promised Germany it will provide compensation for people who were killed or injured in a bomb attack on a West Berlin nightclub popular with US troops in 1986, weekly magazine Der Spiegel reports in its latest issue, due out on Monday.
Der Spiegel said Libya had made the offer several months ago.
The German foreign ministry declined to comment on the report, which comes just days after Libya sent a letter to the United Nations formally accepting responsibility for the bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
Libya's acceptance of responsibility in the Lockerbie affair -- and its promise earlier this week to pay each of the 270 victims compensation - were among the conditions Tripoli was told to meet before the UN would agree to lift sanctions it imposed on Libya in the early 1990s.
The April 6, 1986 attack on "La Belle", a disco popular with US soldiers stationed in Cold War-era West Berlin, killed three US servicemen and one Turkish woman and injured 260 other people.
Immediately after the bombing, the US accused Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi of being behind the attack. Ten days later the United States bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, killing about 40 people including Kadhafi's young adopted daughter.
In November 2001, a German court sentenced two Palestinians, a German and a Libyan to long jail terms for the nightclub attack, after a trial lasting four years.
But the court also said the Libyan state secret services were at least partly to blame for the blast and the German government subsequently asked Tripoli to acknowledge responsibility and compensate the victims.
In a separate case, Tripoli reached a deal with France last year to pay $34m to the families of 170 people killed in the bombing of a French UTA aircraft over Niger in 1989.
Following Libya's concessions over the Lockerbie bombing this week, France said it would seek better compensation for the UTA plane victims and threatened to veto any lifting of UN sanctions if it was not forthcoming.
- AFP