Posted on 11/13/2001 7:09:59 AM PST by veronica
Four people have been found guilty in Berlin of the 1986 bombing of a disco - an attack which the United States and German prosecutors have blamed on Libya.
The West Berlin disco, La Belle, was popular with US soldiers when it was attacked. The bomb killed three people - including two US servicemen - and injured about 250.
The attack prompted retaliatory air strikes by the US against two Libyan cities. The Berlin court upheld claims that Libyan secret service agents and embassy staff had planned the disco attack - but stopped short of blaming Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi in person.
The four people found guilty include Yasser Shraydi, a Palestinian accused of being the ringleader. He was jailed for 14 years for multiple counts of attempted murder.
Libyan Musbah Eter and Lebanese-born Ali Chanaa were also found guilty of attempted murder, and jailed for 12 years. Chanaa's ex-wife, Verena, who actually planted the bomb, was the only one of the four convicted of murder. She was handed a 14-year sentence.
Palestinian Yasser Shraydi was described as the ringleader.
A fifth defendant, the sister of Verena Chanaa, was cleared.
The judge said prosecutors had failed to prove that the attack was planned on the personal orders of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, partly because of the lack of co-operation from Western secret services.
But he said the bombing had been planned by members of the Libyan secret service and workers at the Libyan Embassy in what was then East Berlin.
The judge criticised the "limited willingness" of German and US secret services to provide evidence. Security for the trial was tight It was one of the "disappointments" of the trial, he said.
The Berlin explosion ripped through the La Belle disco on 5 April 1986. Twenty-one-year-old American Sergeant Kenneth T. Ford and 29-year-old Turkish woman Nermin Hannay died at the scene.
Another US sergeant, James E Goins, died later in hospital of his injuries.
Efforts to find the bombers received a massive boost when files of the former East German secret police, the Stasi, were released after the reunification of Germany.
The files named Eter as a Libyan secret agent. He was arrested, and his testimony provided further names and details.
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