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Libya, the West and terrorism: a special JID report
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| 23 November 2001 |
Since the US-led anti-terrorism campaign was launched in September, there has been intense speculation that other countries which figure on the US State Department's list of nations that 'sponsor terrorism' might be targeted once the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been ousted. JID has commissioned this special report, which focuses on the role of Libya and explains why it may prove difficult to maintain any semblance of Western unity should Washington seek to expand the remit of the campaign to other states.
Although Libya has long been regarded as a pariah state by the USA and some of its Western allies, the regime in Tripoli has been devoting considerable efforts to re-building bridges with the international community. In particular, the Libyan government bowed to international pressure when it delivered two of its citizens accused of involvement in the destruction of a Pan Am Boeing 747 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 23 December 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.
However, the long-awaited verdict in another terrorism case has raised crucial questions about the rehabilitation of Libya. On 13 November a German court blamed Libya's intelligence service for the bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin on 5 April 1986, an attack that killed two American servicemen. Four people, including a former Libyan diplomat, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 12 to 14 years. A fifth defendant was acquitted.
Right from the start, the marathon investigation of this crime had been inexorably tangled up in the murky geopolitics of the USA and its European allies, and an era of Middle Eastern terrorism that, after the suicide attacks of 11 September, appears minor in both scale and intensity. Nevertheless, the trial has a resonance with US President George W. Bush's 'global war against terrorism'.