Palestinian nationalist bombing attacks in the international airline terminals of Rome and Vienna on December 27,1985, killing five Americans and twenty other persons, again fired strong anti-Libyan policies. Providing little evidence, the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) blamed the bombings on Libya.
Within two weeks, all U. S. trade with Libya was stopped, Libyan assets in the United States were frozen, and plans were made to send a large naval task force to Libya.
In March, 1986, three U. S. Navy carrier battle groups were in formation off the Libyan coast in an action called Operation Prairie Fire. The launching of two Libyan missiles at U. S. reconnaissance planes resulted in destruction of the radar-missile sites. In addition, at least two Libyan patrol boats were sunk. In all seventy-six Libyans were killed. Ten days later a bomb exploded in a Berlin discotheque packed with American servicemen, killing three people and injuring nearly two hundred. One Libyan, one Palestinian, and three Germans were eventually implicated in the bombing. (Their trial began in Germany in late 1997.) The U. S. State Department claimed that two intercepted cables clearly indicated Libyan sponsorship.
U. S. president Reagan called Qaddafi "the mad dog of the Middle East" in a press conference on April 9, 1986, and put a new operation, El Dorado Canyon, into motion. Operating from England, eighteen U. S. F-111 bombers, joined by fifteen planes from U. S. carriers in the Mediterranean, bombed Tripoli and Benghazi. Qaddafi's Tripoli home was hit with a two-thousand-pound bomb, killing his infant adopted daughter and injuring two other children and his wife. Terrorist training sites in Tripoli and Benghazi were hit, along with the French, Finnish, and Austrian embassies, and a wealthy neighborhood in Tripoli where many foreign dignitaries lived. The Tripoli raid, taking only eleven minutes, killed nearly one hundred people. The raids produced worldwide condemnation, and even in Great Britain Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came under attack for not informing Parliament.
Two and a half years later, the world reacted in horror when a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21,1988, killing all 259 people onboard and 11 people on the ground. Some believed that the bombing was Iran's response for the downing of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, in July, 1988. Others viewed the act as Qaddafi's revenge for the U. S. bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi.
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On September 19, 1989, a French UTA passenger flight exploded over Chad killing all 170 passengers and crew members. By 1996 France had identified six suspects in the bombing, all attached to Libyan intelligence, as well as Qaddafi's own brother-in-law. In 1991, the United States accused two members of Libya's secret service of direct involvement in the Pan Am bombing. Qaddafi placed both individuals under house arrest, but refused to extradite them as Libya had no extradition laws. As a result of this stand, Libya found itself under crushing sanctions of international law until it handed over the suspects in early 1999.
World History
