Libya to discuss compensation

2004-08-09 17:34

Berlin - Libyan envoys opened a new round of talks on Monday with German lawyers on compensation claims over a 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed three people and injured 229 others, one of the lawyers said.

The talks, the sixth round so far, opened at an undisclosed location in Berlin. Lawyer Stephan Maigne declined to give further details.

The April 5 1986 blast at the La Belle disco, a hangout for United States soldiers in then-West Berlin, killed two American servicemen and a Turkish woman.

A Berlin court ruled in 2001 that the bombing was organised by the Libyan secret service and aided by the Libyan Embassy in then-communist East Berlin. It convicted four people of carrying out the bombing, and a federal court upheld their sentences last month.

Libya's settling of the Pan Am and UTA airliner bombing cases - part of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's effort to end his country's pariah status - raised expectations of compensation for the La Belle bombing.

Still, envoys of the Gadhafi International Foundation for Charity Associations and the German side so far have remained apart over the amount to be paid to 163 non-US victims who suffered physical and psychological injury. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation in US courts for American victims.

- AP