Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[StephanieVanbryce]

The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism makes strange bedfellows

Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

SourcesA recent, little noted lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., promises fresh embarrassment for the Bush Administration, this time in regards to the administration's quiet alliance with Libya and Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.”

In recent years the CIA and Libya have found reasons to discreetly work together, building a relationship based on a shared distrust of Islamic radicals. Qaddafi has turned over local radicals suspected of links to Al Qaeda to neighboring pro-American governments, and to return the favor the CIA sent a private jet to Tripoli and flew some of Qaddafi's intelligence officers down to Guantanamo Bay to interrogate Libyans held there.

Libya has been hoping that its cooperation can help get it off the State Department's soon-to-be released annual list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” where it has appeared since 1979. The Bush Administration has suggested that Libya might one day be removed, and the U.S.-Libya Business Council—founded and financed by oil giants including Chevron, Occidental, and Amerada Hess—has been lobbying on Qaddafi's side.

But a slight problem has arrived—in the form of a $10 billion lawsuit, filed on April 5, on behalf of the families of the 21 people killed during the 1986 attempted hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Pakistan by the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). The five hijackers were captured and sentenced to jail terms in Pakistan, but one, Zaid Safarini, was brought to the United States after his release and in May 2004 was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison. Through that case, passengers on the Pan Am flight learned of Libya's sponsorship of the ANO and its direct support for the Karachi hijacking.

The international law firm Crowell & Moring, which represents the plaintiffs in the Washington lawsuit, sent me a number of documents that it has filed as part of the case. The documents, some previously classified, add to what was previously known about Qaddafi's support for the ANO. Three in particular are worth noting:

The first, a 1986 CIA report, said that Turkish authorities had once arrested four Libyans in Ankara carrying Bulgarian hand grenades acquired from the local Libyan embassy. Grenades from the same batch were used by ANO during four subsequent terrorist attacks, including the notorious December 1985 attacks on El Al ticket counters at the Rome and Vienna airports.

The second is an affidavit from Ali Rezaq, an ANO operative who hijacked Egypt Air Flight 648 in November 1985. (The hijackers shot five passengers in the head and dumped their bodies on the tarmac during that affair. Two of the five survived.) Rezaq said that he met with a Libyan official “on two separate occasions regarding the planned hijacking. The second meeting took place in a location where access was permitted only for diplomats . . . Only because of what the Libyan government official said and did was it possible for the hijacking to take place.”

The third is a statement from former senior U.S. intelligence official Pat Lang, who said that “Qaddafi's Libya was most eager to, and did, provide substantial material support for ANO, assisting with funds, facilities, apartments, airline tickets, free entry and exit of members of ANO, use of its 'diplomatic pouch' and diplomatic freight privileges, official documents of all kinds, and actual operational assistance in pre-positioning of people and supplies for the conduct of operations.”

It is hard to imagine a more textbook definition of “state sponsorship.” These documents do refer to old events, but the timing of the reminder of Qaddafi's past support for ANO might cause problems for the colonel's friends in Washington. “Libya has attempted to get off the list of state sponsors of terrorism and earn some sort of legitimate place in the world,” says Dr. Prabhat Krishnaswamy, whose father was killed by the Pan Am hijackers. “But the victims remember.” Even if the Bush Administration might prefer to forget.

* * *

[More Washington Babylon]
[About Washington Babylon]

This is Libya and Justice for All by Ken Silverstein, published Tuesday, April 25, 2006. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.

http://www.harpers.org/sb-libya-and-justice-for-all.html