Libyan leader still shadowed by airline bombings

September 8, 1999

Paris--A decade ago, a French UTA DC-10 airliner was blasted out of the sky over the Sahara desert. That attack on 19 September 1989 which killed 170 people, was strangely similar to the more infamous bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in which 270 died. In both cases, individual Libyan terrorists were clearly indentitied as the perpetrators yet the larger specter of Libyan leader Col. Muammer Gadaffi still shadows the crime.

Though court proceedings in both the US and France have identified some of the culprits, and two "small fry" Libyan agents are waiting trial in the Hague for the 1988 Pan Am attack, experts believe that the two bombings a decade ago were clearly part of an orchestrated and systematic campaign of state supported terrorism. The maestro of these macabre acts, according to French security officials, was none other than the mercurial Libyan leader, now celebrating his 30th anniversary in power.

In 1992 the United Nations imposed a tough set of economic and transportation sanctions on Libya in response to Tripoli's stonewalling on the investigations--in April those sanctions were suspended but not lifted, in response to Libya's "cooperation" with the bombing investigations as well as the handover of the two suspects in the Pan Am tragedy.

Similarly a French criminal court has condemned six Libyans in absentia for their part in bombing UTA flight 772.

Nonetheless according to Madame Francoise Rudetzki, Director of the Paris-based group SOS Attentats, an association of victims of terrorism, "The Libyan leader should also be indicted for complicity in willful homicide." Court papers prove that Gadaffi's brother in law Abdullah Senoussi, one of the six accused, played an instrumental part in the UTA attack.

Madame Rudetzki stresses, "it's inconceivable that the Libyan secret services directed by Gadaffi's brother in law could operate without the Colonel's blessing." She cites the logic of realpolitik between France and Libya--and the undeniable lure of commercial contracts--that have made parts of French officialdom more receptive to closing the case after a pro forma judicial process.

Though Italy has made few rationalizations for its close business relationship with its former North African colony, other western states have been decidedly discreet in their economic dealings with Col. Gadaffi's Libya; especially given the UN embargo. Now that the cumbersome transportation sanctions have been suspended and flights resumed, businessmen looking for lucrative deals in Libya have not been far behind.

The U.S. wisely maintains a separate trade embargo on Libya stemming from Gadaffi's longtime links to international terrorist groups.

The Tripoli regime estimates that $20 billion in business was lost as a result of the UN sanctions which banned imports for vital oil industry equipment and enforced a crippling air transport embargo which effectively isolated Libya. The Financial Times of London states, "Gadaffi tries to brush up his image--the country is planning a makeover to lure investors and tourists" via conferences and promotion efforts to attract foreign investors in what's estimated at $9 billion in investment opportunities primarily in the petroleum sector as well as in the lacking infrastructure.

Libya likewise is trying to "soften its image" both for the tourist market as well as trim some of the odious red tape which constricts commerce and investment in the quaintly titled Libyan Socialist Arab Jamaharih.

As one would expect Col Gadaffi's desert realm suffers from what would be diplomatically described as a "image problem." Thirty years into his tenure as self-appointed supremo, Gadaffi no longer wishes to cultivate his old image as "Patron Saint of international terror" anymore than he wants his country to be on the perpetual political fringes of the Arab world.

Yet the impasse is of Gadaffi's own making. Libya has paid a piddling $31 million combined to the relatives of the 170 UTA victims for the "aviation accident." As Rudetzki stresses, "This is not a sanction against Libya but an offering for its victims which does not cover the truth. That France wants to renew her relationship with Libya doesn't shock us," she says, "we simply want justice to be rendered."

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.