Attack on the Berlin disco of 1986

The attack on the Berlin disco of 5 April 1986 was a terrorist attack on the disco The beautiful , in West Berlin, West Germany.

A bomb placed under a table close to the Disc Jockey stand exploded in the club – who was frequented by many US soldiers – killing a Turkish woman and two soldiers, and injuring 230 people, including more than 50 US soldiers. The Turkish girl Nerin Hannay and the American sergeant Kenneth T. Ford remained killed instantly, while the American sergeant James E. Goins died two months later. Some of the injured remained permanently disabled. ^[first]

Libya was accused of the attack after some fax messages had been intercepted to the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, and in which the embassy congratulated the excellent work done. Subsequently, the US president Ronald Reagan reacted by ordering air attacks against the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the city of Benghazi. ^[2]

Although relationships blamed Libya for the attack on the disco, no individual was officially accused of the attack until Germany’s reunification in 1990, and the subsequent reopening of the case. The stasis documents led the German prosecutor to investigate Abdulghasem Musbah Eter, a Libyan who had worked at the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. The stasis documents indicated him as an agent, and the prosecutors said it was the main contact of the agency Libyan espionage at the Embassy.

Eter and four other suspicions were arrested in 1996 between Lebanon, Italy, Greece and Germany, and put on trial a year later. In 2001 Musbah Abdulghasem Eter, and two Palestinians, Yasser Mohammed Chreidi (aka Yasser al-Shuraidi, or Yassir Chraidi) and Ali Chanaa, were sentenced by the Berlin Court for aiding and abetting the murder, and the ex-wife of Chanaa, the German Verena Chanaa, was condemned for murder as she moved the bomb in person. The four were sentenced to penalties between 12 and 14 years of detention. ^[3]

The prosecutor said that the three men assembled the bomb in Chanaa’s apartment. The bomb was brought to West Berlin in a Libyan diplomatic bag. Verena Chanaa and her sister, Andrea Haeusler, transported her to the disco The beautiful In a travel bag, and there was left there for five minutes before it exploded. Andrea Haeusler was acquitted, because there were no evidence that she knew about the bomb in the bag. ^[4]

The judge said it was not clear if Gaddafi or Libyan intelligence had ordered the attack. Two weeks before the attack in the disco The beautiful , Gaddafi triggered Arab assaults against US interests all over the world, following a naval clash between the USA and Libya in the Gulf of Sirte, in international waters claimed by Libya, and in which 35 sailors were killed aboard a Libyan patrol boat .

On August 17, 2003 Libya reported to the German government that she was ready to negotiate compensation for the attack with lawyers for non -US victims. A year later, on August 10, 2004, Libya concluded an agreement to pay a total of 35 million dollars as compensation.

In October 2008 Libya paid 1.5 billion dollars in a fund that will be used to compensate for the relatives of the victims of the attack of Lockerbie, together with the remaining 20% ​​of the sum agreed in 2003, the victims of the 1986 attack in the Berlin disco, the US victims of the attack on the flight Uta 772 and the Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing in Tripoli and Benghazi. ^[5]