The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read online

  Authorities said the evidence was built up after FBI agents and Scottish police combed 845 square miles of territory. One clue was part of the Toshiba’s circuit board. Another was part of a timing device traced to Meister and Bollier, a Zurich-based Swiss company that had sold it in a consignment of 20 prototypes made in 1985–1986 to a high-level Libyan intelligence official. Moreover, according to the State Department, the Pan Am 103 bomb had been activated by a sophisticated electronic timer, in contrast to the PFLP-GC bombs, which had altimeter switches and relatively crude timers.

  On December 4, 1991, Libya’s new intelligence chief, Col. Yusuf al-Dabri, announced the detention of Megrahi and Fhimah. The United States and United Kingdom demanded their extradition, but Qadhafi declined.

  On December 8, 1991, Libya announced that it would try the two men charged by U.S. and U.K. authorities and that it would deliver the death penalty if they were found guilty.

  On December 29, 1991, the Washington Post cited a CNN report that a Libyan who defected to the United States could serve as a witness in the case, testifying that Fhimah fabricated the Air Malta luggage tags. He was in the Justice Department’s Witness Protection Program and was living under an assumed identity on the West Coast. The low-level defector, who did not have an intelligence affiliation, obtained Fhimah’s Malta diary. The December 15, 1988, diary entry said, “Take tags from Air Malta.” The defector had arrived in the United States several months earlier, but had left some family members in Libya. He could be eligible for up to $4 million in a federal reward system.

  On January 14, 1992, Libya proposed that an international commission of legal experts decide whether the UN Security Council should rule on who was responsible for the UTA and Pan Am cases. Maj. Abdul Salaam Jalloud said that his government would abide by the decision of such a panel, although Libya questioned whether the United Nations had jurisdiction.

  On January 20, 1992, the UN Security Council strengthened draft Resolution 731 urging Libya to surrender the six suspects wanted for the Pan Am and UTA bombings. The resolution, which passed unanimously on January 21, 1992, included a lead role for UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and called for a “full and effective response” to requests for the suspects. Libya denounced the resolution as an infringement on its sovereignty.

  On March 31, 1992, the UN Security Council imposed via Resolution 748 an air and arms embargo on Libya, which took effect on April 15, 1992, when Libya refused to hand over the duo. The sanctions were far milder than those in place against Iraq and permitted oil exports. Libya thus became the sixth country in UN history to be hit with sanctions, joining Rhodesia, South Africa, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Somalia.

  On May 6, 1992, the Argentine interior ministry canceled the residence permit and Argentine passport granted to Syrian citizen Monzer al-Kassar, 46, accused narcoterrorist and weapons smuggler. He was also suspected of financing the Lockerbie bombing. Buenos Aires Clarin re ported that the Israeli secret service was following an “al-Kassar clue” regarding the March 17, 1992, bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. On June 3, 1992, officers of Spain’s general intelligence department arrested al-Kassar and two other men as they were deplaning at Madrid–Barajas airport as they arrived on a flight from Vienna.

  On September 28, 1993, Lord Macaulay suggested that an international court be set up to deal with such cases. It would have judges from Libya, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, and it would be chaired by a judge from another country. The prosecution could be conducted by Scotland’s lord advocate and the U.S. attorney general.

  On September 29, 1993, Libyan foreign minister Omar Muntasser told UN secretary general Boutros-Ghali that it would turn over the duo to Scotland.

  On January 23, 1994, the London Observer reported that Edwin Bollier, who had changed his testimony on the timers, admitted receiving expenses from Libya to include his travel to and from Libya, hotel bills there, and telephone and fax expenses, as well as Lockerbie-related legal bills. He also hoped Libya would pick up the £1.2 million in lost business Mebo had suffered.

  On March 23, 1995, the FBI announced a $4 million reward for the capture of the two Libyans and placed them on its Ten Most Wanted List.

  On March 31, 1995, the UN Security Council extended the sanctions against Libya. U.S. UN ambassador Madeleine K. Albright urged other nations to join in an oil embargo. The council reviewed the sanctions every 120 days. No formal vote was taken on the automatic extension. On October 29, 1988, the UN Security Council, for the 20th time in seven years, extended the sanctions against Libya.

  The United Nations and the Libyans eventually agreed to a trial to be hosted by the International Court of Justice in The Hague using Scottish law with a Scottish judge. On April 5, 1999, the Libyans handed over the duo to UN officials, who took them to Camp Zeist outside The Hague. Their arrival automatically suspended the sanctions against Libya. The two appeared in court the next day charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and violations of international aviation security laws. The trial opened on May 3, 2000.

  On January 31, 2001, the court found Megrahi guilty of murder; he lost an appeal on March 14, 2002. Fhimah was acquitted and immediately returned to a hero’s welcome in Libya. The court said the Libyan government was involved in planning and carrying out the bombing. Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. The court cited the identification of the Swiss-made Mebo MST13 timer as a key piece of evidence linking the bomb to the Libyans. Testimony of a prosecution witness was deemed not credible enough to link Fhimah to the blast.

  On August 15, 2003, Libya formally accepted responsibility and agreed to pay as much as $10 million to each victim’s family. The first $4 million would be paid upon lifting of UN sanctions, the next $4 million after the United States lifted sanctions, and the final money after the State Department removed Libya from the patron state list. On September 20, 2004, President Bush lifted the ban on commercial air service to Libya and released $1.3 billion in frozen Libyan assets. Libya was expected to use $1 billion of the money to compensate the families. On June 26, 2006, Libya announced that it was no longer legally bound to its agreement to make final payments of $2 million each to the families of the victims. Libya said that although it had recently been dropped from the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors, the United States had until the end of 2004 to do so to and thereby trigger the final payment.

  On December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would abandon weapons of mass destruction, freeze its nuclear program, and permit international inspectors into the country.

  On August 4, 2008, President Bush directed the State Department to settle the final lawsuits against Libya in the bombing. Libya would receive immunity from future proceedings once compensation was paid.

  Megrahi, claiming to have three months to live from terminal prostate cancer, was permitted to return to Libya on August 20, 2009. He gave a media interview from his death bed in October 2011. The following month, U.S. State Department said it would make a formal request for extradition. Meghrahi died at his home in Tripoli, Libya, on May 20, 2012.

  September 19, 1989

  French Airline UTA 772 Bombing

  Overview: While the Pan Am 103 bombing received greater publicity in the United States, the Libyan hand was also seen behind the bombing of a French airline Union des Transports Aériens (UTA) plane from Chad that killed 171 people. Libya government officials eschewed responsibility, but Tripoli ultimately paid millions in compensation to the victims’ families.

  Incident: On September 19, 1989, the Clandestine Chadian Resistance claimed credit for setting off a bomb in French UTA flight 772, a DC-10 flying from N’djamena to Paris, killing all 171 passengers and crew when it crashed in eastern Niger’s Tenere Desert.

  Among the dead were 49 Congolese, 29 Chadians, and French passengers. All of the crew were French. There were eight children, including three infants, on board. The victims included seven
Americans, including Bonnie Pugh, wife of Robert L. Pugh, U.S. ambassador to Chad. Mrs. Pugh was traveling to help plan the wedding of her daughter in October. Also on the plane was Margaret Schutzius, 23, a Peace Corps volunteer who had completed a two-year tour in Chad as an English teacher; Patrick Huff, 38, of Franklin Texas; Donald Warner, 25, of Terry, Montana, of Parker Drilling Company; and Mihai Ali Manestianu. Also on board were James Turlington, 48, of Bellville, Texas, and Mark Corder, 35, of Houston, who had worked for Esso and an Exxon subsidiary.

  The dead included Dominique Mavoungou, managing director of Congo’s Housing Promotion and Management Company; his wife; child; and seven members of another family. Other victims were the leader of Congo’s theatrical troupe, Roca do Zulu; Jean-Pierre Klein of France; the daughter of Jean-Michel Bokamba Yangouma, secretary general of the Congolese Trade Union Confederation; and son of Norbert Dabira, secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Congolese Labour Party. One of the Frenchmen, Jacques Renaudat, 53, had been alleged to be trafficking arms. Mahamat Soumahila, Chad’s minister for planning and cooperation, also died. Two British employees of Parker Drilling perished. The Capuchin Roman Catholic order announced in Lucerne that Monsignors Antoine Gervais Aeby, who heads the order in Switzerland, and Gabriel Balet, a Swiss bishop in Chad, were on the flight. Also dead was the brother of Renaud Denoix de Saint Marc, the French government’s secretary general.

  Reports said 77 of the 155 passengers boarded the plane in Brazzaville.

  The group sent a typewritten statement in French to a Western news agency in Beirut saying that the “struggle will continue until the total departure of colonial military troops from Africa.” Shia Muslim activists in Africa were suspected.

  French authorities denigrated two telephoned claims by callers from the Islamic Jihad. One caller demanded the release of Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, the Shi’ite cleric who was captured by Israel in 1989, in southern Lebanon. The caller accused the French government of sharing information on him with Israel.

  The flight began in Brazzaville, Congo, and was flying to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Le Parisien and Liberation reported that 10 kilograms of Semtex plastic explosives were planted on the plane’s fuel tanks in Brazzaville.

  On September 22, 1989, the French government denied reports that it had received warnings of the attack. On September 15, 1989, the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa had quoted pro-Iranian Islamic militants as accusing France of reneging on a May 1988 deal that led to the release of three French hostages in Lebanon. The group threatened to attack French interests in Africa.

  On October 1, 1989, Hamburg’s Bild Am Sonntag claimed that Libyan leader Mu’ammar Qadhafi paid the killers and provided the Semtex-H to the PFLP-GC. Bild reported that Libyan diplomats provided cash to PFLP offices in France, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Romania for explosives, weapons, plane tickets, hotels, and expenses.

  The paper said Qadhafi was getting back at the French for aiding the Chadians in their border skirmishes with Libya. Bild attributed the UTA and Lockerbie bombings to Palestinian engineer Muhamad al-’Umari (alias Abu Ibrahim), founder of the terrorist group 15 May in 1979. He was the first to develop an easily moldable explosive that cannot be identified by the X-ray instruments at airports and explodes in planes through self-ignition with the help of an altimeter.

  The next day, Libreville’s Africa No. One cited Rene Lapautre, UTA’s managing director, as saying that the bomb was placed on the plane in Brazzaville in a sugar container in the front baggage compartment.

  On October 6, 1989, Salah Khalaf (alias Abu Iyad), the PLO’s number two, told Le Journal Du Dimanche that Iranians were cooperating with the PFLP-GC, who had been involved in the bombing.

  On October 31, 1989, Gabon’s Africa No. One reported that a Samsonite attaché case was discovered with a double depth lining with deposits of 150–300 grams of pentryl between the layers. The bomb had a simple quartz alarm clock for a detonator to automatically set off the explosion at 10,000 meters. The paper noted that the suitcase was the same as used in the February 1985 attack on the British Marks and Spencer store in Paris. The perpetrator, arrested a year later, was Habib Amal. While awaiting sentencing, he admitted to being a member of Abu Ibrahim’s group of Fatah dissidents, which was linked to Hizballah.

  On August 25, 1990, Paris AFP reported that a trio of Congolese armed by Libyan diplomats placed the bomb. Le Point quoted investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere as concluding that the mastermind was a Libyan diplomat in Brazzaville, Abdallah al-Azrag. AFP added that one of the passengers, Apollinaire Mangatany, had taken explosives training in Libya. It was not clear whether he was one of the nine passengers who deplaned in Ndjamena. In January 1990, according to Le Point, Congelese police arrested Mangatany’s friend, Bernard Yanga, who had taken him to the Brazzaville airport. Yanga confessed, and provided the name of accomplice Jean-Bosco Ngalina, believed to have gone to Zaire. Yanga told French and Congolese authorities that Mangatany was to leave the plane in Chad, where the bomb was to explode on the tarmac, mimicking a 1984 attack.

  On October 26, 1990, the Zairian paper Elima reported that Ngalina had been arrested two weeks earlier and held in the Kinshasa central prison of Makala on suspicion of masterminding the bombing. He fled to Zaire immediately after the bomb was planted on the plane. He was arrested after 12 investigators from Zaire, Paris, and Interpol finished their work. The paper reported that he had confessed to fabricating the bomb. Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a French examining magistrate, arrived in Kinshasa on October 25, 1990, to hear Ngalina’s case. Paris AFP reported that Ngalina was a native of Zaire’s Equateur Province, from which President Mobutu hailed.

  On June 26, 1991, French authorities announced that it had evidence that senior Libyan officials, including Abdullah Senoussi, Qadhafi’s brother-in-law and de facto chief of Libyan intelligence, and Moussa Koussa, vice minister of foreign affairs, were involved in the UTA bombing and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103. Attacks against U.S. and French targets were discussed at a meeting at Libyan intelligence headquarters in Tripoli in September 1988. L’Express cited the confessions of two terrorists who took part in the UTA bombing. Judge Bruguiere was near to issuing charges against the Libyans. The UTA bomb was reportedly brought into the Congo in a Libyan diplomatic pouch and delivered to the three Congolese by an official of the Libyan Embassy in Brazzaville. Mangatany brought it onto the plane. Fragments of the bomb led investigators to believe that it was one of five bought by the Libyans from terrorist bomb-maker Abu Ibrahim in the mid-1980s.

  On October 30, 1991, Bruguiere issued arrest warrants for Senoussi; ‘Abdallah al-Azraq, Libya’s chief diplomat in Brazzaville who also led Libyan intelligence there; and Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas, two members of the Libyan intelligence service. Naeli left Brazzaville on the day of the bombing. All four were charged with violations of French law by conspiring to commit murder, destroying property with explosives, and taking part in a terrorist enterprise. Bruguiere also issued wanted notices for Koussa and ‘Abdessalam Zadma, No. 3 in the Libyan intelligence service and chief of Qadhafi’s bodyguards. The United States was also investigating a Libyan intelligence official named Mohammed Naydi, who at times used the name Naeli. (Naydi and another Libyan intelligence officer were arrested in February 1988 in Dakar, Senegal, but released four months later. They were carrying timers which matched the Pan Am timer. Clothing found in the bombedout suitcase was purchased in a Silema, Malta, clothing shop by one of Naydi’s lieutenants.)

  On January 13, 1992, at Cotonou, Benin, police arrested French citizen Ahmed Bouzid in the UTA investigation.

  Yanga showed up at the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Zaire, on March 18, 1992, saying that he was ready to help with inquiries. He had been arrested early in 1990, after which he had accused the Libyan chargé d’affaires in Brazzaville of giving him explosives, which were made into a parcel and then handed to a passenger later thought to have left the plane during a stop in Chad. Yanga named two Congolese as his accomp
lices. All three were members of an opposition party financed by Libya. Yanga later retracted his accusations against Abdallah Elazragh, the Libyan chargé. On the basis of his evidence and other findings, however, Bruguiere issued an international arrest warrant against four Libyans in October 1991.

  On February 3, 1993, Congolese police arrested Mohamed Emali, managing director of the Congolese Arab Libyan Lumber Company, in a Brazzaville hotel. He was released on February 11, 1993, after interrogation by French and Congolese police.

  On December 1, 1994, French authorities detained Libyan intelligence officer Ali Omar Mansour for questioning in the UTA case. Bruguiere ordered him released on December 5, 1994.

  Bruguiere visited Libya on July 5–18, 1996, and questioned 40 people.

  On March 10, 1999, a French antiterrorism court sentenced in absentia Abdesslam Issa Shibani; Abdesslam Mamouda, who purchased the bomb timer in Germany; Senoussi; Elazragh; Ibrahim Naeli; and Arbas to life in prison.

  On July 16, 1999, Libya gave $33 million to France to compensate families of the victims. On January 9, 2004, the Qadhafi Foundation said it would add $170 million in compensation in four installments.

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  The 1990s

  The final decade of the millennium saw a new tactic tried by Western governments—renditions of terrorists. Rather than await foot dragging and recalcitrant governments to arrest and extradite terrorists, many of whom enjoyed substantial freedom of movement on the turf of sympathetic and/or cowed regimes, fedup terrorist targets took the battle to the perpetrators. With a series of stings and straightforward extrajudicial operations, Western governments quietly snatched terrorists off the streets, from their yachts, and from their safe houses and whisked them off to Western jails for trial on a host of charges.