"Police Sure Drug Addict Was Berlin Disco Bomber"

Libyan sponsored bombing of Berlin discotheque

Newspaper article

By: Tom Bower

Date: March 2, 1988

Source: The Times, a daily newspaper based in London.

About the Author: Tom Bower is an investigative journalist and author. His biographies include Maxwell: The Outsider (1992), Fayed: The Unauthorised Biography (1998), Branson (2000), and Gordon Brown (2004).

INTRODUCTION

A bomb exploded in a crowded Berlin disco on April 5, 1986. Two American soldiers and a Turkish woman died as a result of the blast. 229 others were wounded, many of them Americans. The disco, La Belle, was popular among U.S. servicemen. The bomb detonated around 1:45 a.m., Berlin time, with close to five hundred people in the building. The floor and ceiling of the disco collapsed, and the walls were blown in by the strength of the explosion.

Nine days after the incident, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that clear and indisputable evidence directly linked Colonel Gadaffi, the leader of Libya, to the bombing of the La Belle disco. Reagan used this information as the justification for bombing several sites in Libya, ten days after the disco explosion.

According to the Times article on March 2, 1988, the West Berlin police investigations were reaching different conclusions. The West Berlin investigations pointed towards a connection with Syria, not Libya. A Jordanian man, Ahmed Hazi, living in West Berlin, was the focus of the investigation. He admitted to receiving explosive materials made of Sentex, a chemical manufactured in Eastern Europe, from a Syrian diplomat. Forensic experts determined that the bomb used in the La Belle disco was also made of Sentex. Hazi also claimed responsibility for planting a Syntex bomb that exploded a week earlier at the German-Arab Friendship Society in Berlin.

Anti-Terrorist Squad officers at Scotland Yard contributed to the West Berlin investigation, as they had arrested Hazi's brother, Nezar Hindawi, for conspiring to place a Syntex bomb on an El Al jet at Heathrow airport. Hindawi admitted that the bomb he was to use at Heathrow was supplied by the Syrian embassy in London. Hindawi also admitted that his brother, Hazi, was a member of his small terrorist group living in West Berlin.

A contact book and a sketch identified as the plan of the La Belle disco found in Hazi's West Berlin flat, were further pieces of evidence that convinced investigators that Hazi was responsible for the disco bombing. A Berlin prostitute, for whom Hazi regularly supplied heroin, was first accused of working with Hazi in the bombing and of placing the bomb in the night club.

However, this line of investigation proved wrong as it was subsequently admitted by Libyan leader Gadaffi that Libya was behind the bombing.

PRIMARY SOURCE

. . . The West German discoveries contradict the announcement made by President Reagan nine days after the incident that Colonel Gadaffi of Libya was responsible for the 'monstrous brutality' in West Berlin. US evidence, the President said, "is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable" and on that basis he announced his approval of the bombing of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. But the West Berlin police have never found evidence of a Libyan link.

Suspicion fell on Endrigkeit last autumn. It followed a complete review of the hitherto unsuccessful police investigation by the prosecutor in West Berlin, Herr Detlev Mehles. During his review, he visited Anti-Terrorist Squad officers at Scotland Yard, where he acknowledges that earlier British criticisms about the West German inquiry were justified.

The British connection with the West German inquiry is crucial. On April 18, 1986, Scotland Yard officers arrested Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian who was responsible for conspiring to place a bomb on an El Al jet at Heathrow airport.

Hindawi told the police that his brother, Ahmed Hazi, was a member of his small terrorist network and lived in West Berlin. Acting on a tip from London, police burst into Hazi's flat to discover that the Arab, having heard the news of his brother's arrest, was burning documents.

Hazi soon confessed that he had planted the bomb which exploded on March 29, 1986, at the German-Arab Friendship Society in the city. Until then West Berlin police had been baffled both about the motive and identity of the perpetrators, and the type of the explosive, Sentex, manufactured in Eastern Europe and hitherto unseen in West Germany.

Significantly, the same explosives were used by Hindawi in London. Hazi said that the explosives were handed to him by a Syrian 'diplomat.' Hindawi also admitted that his Sentex bomb was supplied from the Syrian Embassy in London. By then, West German forensic experts had established that Sentex had been also used at La Belle discotheque.

Two incriminating documents were found by police in Hazi's flat—his contact book, and a vague sketch identified as a plan of the discotheque by the club's owner. The evidence was sufficient for Herr Mandred Ganshaw, the senior investigating police officer, to be convinced of Hazi's guilt.

SIGNIFICANCE

The bombing came at a time when tensions between the United States and Libya were boiling. The month prior to the disco attack, the U.S. carried out a naval strike against Libya in the Gulf of Sirte. U.S. and German officials claimed that Libya put a bomb in the La Belle disco to purposely target Americans in West Berlin, as the night club was known to be heavily frequented by off-duty American military personnel.

The U.S. government stated that intelligence information intercepted from the Libyan People's Bureau in East Berlin clearly linked Libya to the La Belle bombings. Washington said the U.S. military police knew an attack was coming, and had begun evacuating discos in West Berlin minutes before the La Belle incident took place. However, this claim was disputed by the U.S. deputy chief of the military police in Berlin.

In 1995, information files from the former East German secret police, the Stasi, led to arrests that did in fact link Libya to the bombing. The Stasi monitored many of what it called terrorist groups operating in East Berlin before the end of the Cold War. Telegrams sent from the Libyan embassy in East Berlin to Tripoli were used as evidence in the La Belle case. Fifteen years after the attack, in November of 2001, four people were convicted in Berlin. Despite the facts presented in the newspaper article, Hazi and the Berlin prostitute who was said to have helped him carry out the attacks, were not among the four.

Yassir Shraidi, a Palestinian who had been employed at the Libya embassy in East Berlin, was convicted of organizing the attack. He also assembled the bomb that was used. Libyan diplomat, Musbah Eter, the primary contact in the Libyan intelligence agency in East Berlin, was convicted as a co-conspirator. Another Palestinian, Ali Chanaa, was also convicted, having scouted out appropriate targets where Americans would be gathered. The final conviction was of a 42-year-old German woman who actually planted the bomb near the dance floor of the disco.

In September 2004, Libya agreed to pay $35 million in compensation to the non-American victims of the disco attack. This settlement removed one of the last barriers to Libya's international rehabilitation, following years of being accused by Western governments of supporting terrorism. Libya stated it would not compensate American victims until Washington compensated victims of its retaliation bombings. Libya has also paid compensation to families of the victims of the Lockerbie Pan-Am bombing, and to families of victims who died in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airliner.

The significance of the article lies in the fact that it demonstrates that investigators, working on reasonable assumptions, and with seemingly convincing evidence in hand, can come to the wrong conclusions. Such conclusions can be particularity perilous in the world of terrorism where groups, motives, and the devices used often overlap.

The article was one of many that cast doubt on then U.S. President Ronald Reagan's conclusion that Libya was involved in state-sponsored terrorism during the period and that Gadaffi knew and approved of the bombings. At the time, articles such as the example provided were used by political opponents of Reagan and of American foreign policy to criticize the U.S. for its policies and to discredit motives for the retaliatory attacks on Libya.

The revelation that Libya was behind the disco bombing and other terrorist acts, the subsequent acceptance of responsibility by Libya, and a public willingness to abandon attempts to gain weapons of mass destruction have paved the way for improved relations between Libya and Western countries. In September of 2004, Colin Powell became the first U.S. Secretary of State to meet with Libyan officials in over twenty years.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Periodicals

Weisman, Stephen R. "Powell Holds Brief Meeting With Minister From Libya." New York Times. September 24, 2004.

Web sites

BBC News. "On This Day 5 April 1986: Berlin Disco Bombed." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/5/newsid_4357000/4357255.stm> (Accessed July 4, 2005).

BBC News. "Libya inks $35m Berlin bomb deal." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3625756.stm> (accessed July 4, 2005).

International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. "Four Convicted for 1986 Disco Bombing." <http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=706> (accessed July 4, 2005).