The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks (18 page)

Reports said 77 of the 155 passengers boarded the plane in Brazzaville.

The group sent a typewritten statement in French to a Western news agency in Beirut saying that the “struggle will continue until the total departure of colonial military troops from Africa.” Shia Muslim activists in Africa were suspected.

French authorities denigrated two telephoned claims by callers from the Islamic Jihad. One caller demanded the release of Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, the Shi'ite cleric who was captured by Israel in 1989, in southern Lebanon. The caller accused the French government of sharing information on him with Israel.

The flight began in Brazzaville, Congo, and was flying to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
Le Parisien
and
Liberation
reported that 10 kilograms of Semtex plastic explosives were planted on the plane's fuel tanks in Brazzaville.

On September 22, 1989, the French government denied reports that it had received warnings of the attack. On September 15, 1989, the Lebanese magazine
Ash Shiraa
had quoted pro-Iranian Islamic militants as
accusing France of reneging on a May 1988 deal that led to the release of three French hostages in Lebanon. The group threatened to attack French interests in Africa.

On October 1, 1989, Hamburg's
Bild Am Sonntag
claimed that Libyan leader Mu'ammar Qadhafi paid the killers and provided the Semtex-H to the PFLP-GC.
Bild
reported that Libyan diplomats provided cash to PFLP offices in France, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Romania for explosives, weapons, plane tickets, hotels, and expenses.

The paper said Qadhafi was getting back at the French for aiding the Chadians in their border skirmishes with Libya.
Bild
attributed the UTA and Lockerbie bombings to Palestinian engineer Muhamad al-'Umari (alias Abu Ibrahim), founder of the terrorist group 15 May in 1979. He was the first to develop an easily moldable explosive that cannot be identified by the X-ray instruments at airports and explodes in planes through self-ignition with the help of an altimeter.

The next day, Libreville's
Africa No. One
cited Rene Lapautre, UTA's managing director, as saying that the bomb was placed on the plane in Brazzaville in a sugar container in the front baggage compartment.

On October 6, 1989, Salah Khalaf (alias Abu Iyad), the PLO's number two, told
Le Journal Du Dimanche
that Iranians were cooperating with the PFLP-GC, who had been involved in the bombing.

On October 31, 1989, Gabon's
Africa No. One
reported that a Samsonite attaché case was discovered with a double depth lining with deposits of 150–300 grams of pentryl between the layers. The bomb had a simple quartz alarm clock for a detonator to automatically set off the explosion at 10,000 meters. The paper noted that the suitcase was the same as used in the February 1985 attack on the British Marks and Spencer store in Paris. The perpetrator, arrested a year later, was Habib Amal. While awaiting sentencing, he admitted to being a member of Abu Ibrahim's group of Fatah dissidents, which was linked to Hizballah.

On August 25, 1990, Paris AFP reported that a trio of Congolese armed by Libyan diplomats placed the bomb.
Le Point
quoted investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere as concluding that the mastermind was a Libyan diplomat in Brazzaville, Abdallah al-Azrag. AFP added that one of the passengers, Apollinaire Mangatany, had taken explosives training in Libya. It was not clear whether he was one of the nine passengers who deplaned in Ndjamena. In January 1990, according to
Le Point
, Congelese police arrested Mangatany's friend, Bernard Yanga, who had taken him to the Brazzaville airport. Yanga confessed, and provided the name of accomplice Jean-Bosco Ngalina, believed to have gone to Zaire. Yanga told French and Congolese authorities that Mangatany was to leave the plane in Chad, where the bomb was to explode on the tarmac, mimicking a 1984 attack.

On October 26, 1990, the Zairian paper
Elima
reported that Ngalina had been arrested two weeks earlier and held in the Kinshasa central
prison of Makala on suspicion of masterminding the bombing. He fled to Zaire immediately after the bomb was planted on the plane. He was arrested after 12 investigators from Zaire, Paris, and Interpol finished their work. The paper reported that he had confessed to fabricating the bomb. Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a French examining magistrate, arrived in Kinshasa on October 25, 1990, to hear Ngalina's case. Paris AFP reported that Ngalina was a native of Zaire's Equateur Province, from which President Mobutu hailed.

On June 26, 1991, French authorities announced that it had evidence that senior Libyan officials, including Abdullah Senoussi, Qadhafi's brother-in-law and de facto chief of Libyan intelligence, and Moussa Koussa, vice minister of foreign affairs, were involved in the UTA bombing and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103. Attacks against U.S. and French targets were discussed at a meeting at Libyan intelligence headquarters in Tripoli in September 1988.
L'Express
cited the confessions of two terrorists who took part in the UTA bombing. Judge Bruguiere was near to issuing charges against the Libyans. The UTA bomb was reportedly brought into the Congo in a Libyan diplomatic pouch and delivered to the three Congolese by an official of the Libyan Embassy in Brazzaville. Mangatany brought it onto the plane. Fragments of the bomb led investigators to believe that it was one of five bought by the Libyans from terrorist bomb-maker Abu Ibrahim in the mid-1980s.

On October 30, 1991, Bruguiere issued arrest warrants for Senoussi; ‘Abdallah al-Azraq, Libya's chief diplomat in Brazzaville who also led Libyan intelligence there; and Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas, two members of the Libyan intelligence service. Naeli left Brazzaville on the day of the bombing. All four were charged with violations of French law by conspiring to commit murder, destroying property with explosives, and taking part in a terrorist enterprise. Bruguiere also issued wanted notices for Koussa and ‘Abdessalam Zadma, No. 3 in the Libyan intelligence service and chief of Qadhafi's bodyguards. The United States was also investigating a Libyan intelligence official named Mohammed Naydi, who at times used the name Naeli. (Naydi and another Libyan intelligence officer were arrested in February 1988 in Dakar, Senegal, but released four months later. They were carrying timers which matched the Pan Am timer. Clothing found in the bombedout suitcase was purchased in a Silema, Malta, clothing shop by one of Naydi's lieutenants.)

On January 13, 1992, at Cotonou, Benin, police arrested French citizen Ahmed Bouzid in the UTA investigation.

Yanga showed up at the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Zaire, on March 18, 1992, saying that he was ready to help with inquiries. He had been arrested early in 1990, after which he had accused the Libyan chargé d'affaires in Brazzaville of giving him explosives, which were made into a parcel and then handed to a passenger later thought to have left the
plane during a stop in Chad. Yanga named two Congolese as his accomplices. All three were members of an opposition party financed by Libya. Yanga later retracted his accusations against Abdallah Elazragh, the Libyan chargé. On the basis of his evidence and other findings, however, Bruguiere issued an international arrest warrant against four Libyans in October 1991.

On February 3, 1993, Congolese police arrested Mohamed Emali, managing director of the Congolese Arab Libyan Lumber Company, in a Brazzaville hotel. He was released on February 11, 1993, after interrogation by French and Congolese police.

On December 1, 1994, French authorities detained Libyan intelligence officer Ali Omar Mansour for questioning in the UTA case. Bruguiere ordered him released on December 5, 1994.

Bruguiere visited Libya on July 5–18, 1996, and questioned 40 people.

On March 10, 1999, a French antiterrorism court sentenced in absentia Abdesslam Issa Shibani; Abdesslam Mamouda, who purchased the bomb timer in Germany; Senoussi; Elazragh; Ibrahim Naeli; and Arbas to life in prison.

On July 16, 1999, Libya gave $33 million to France to compensate families of the victims. On January 9, 2004, the Qadhafi Foundation said it would add $170 million in compensation in four installments.

The final decade of the millennium saw a new tactic tried by Western governments—renditions of terrorists. Rather than await foot dragging and recalcitrant governments to arrest and extradite terrorists, many of whom enjoyed substantial freedom of movement on the turf of sympathetic and/or cowed regimes, fedup terrorist targets took the battle to the perpetrators. With a series of stings and straightforward extrajudicial operations, Western governments quietly snatched terrorists off the streets, from their yachts, and from their safe houses and whisked them off to Western jails for trial on a host of charges.

The 1990s saw perhaps the most diverse group of perpetrators of the
worst
, including Latin American leftists, classical Irish Republican Army (IRA) separatists, radical and religious-based Palestinians, right-wing bands, dispossessed Third Worlders with no clearly articulated ideology, radical Islamists, oddball cults, separatist Chechens, and the rise of what became the most well-known terrorist group of the new millennium— al Qaeda.

The decade saw the use on a mass scale of chemical weapons by a terrorist group against the Tokyo subways. Aum Shin Rikyo explored the use of a host of nontraditional weapons—biological, chemical, and nuclear— and by example established that causing widespread deaths and injuries via this type of weapon was now a viable part of a terrorist arsenal.

The fledgling al Qaeda established a reputation for willingness to attack major targets, be they supposedly hardened embassies or symbols of Western wealth, and to continue to do so until they succeeded. Transient initial failures to set off bombs and create mass casualties just meant a return to the drawing board and recruitment of a new batch of willing bombers. Al Qaeda's operations in the 1990s showed tremendous patience for planning, logistics, fund-raising, recruitment, and surveillance of targets, often taking years of attention to detail.

The decade also saw a more difficult challenge to the defense forces— the rise of the suicide bomber. Although known in the West mostly as a Middle Eastern phenomenon with initial attacks against Israelis and down the road against Westerners, the technique was used throughout the world, most notably by Sri Lanka Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whose rolls of suicide bombers included women, heretofore not known for taking their lives in no-return operations.

Overview:
The 1994 bombing of the Argentine–Israel Mutual Aid Society (AIMA) in Buenos Aires and the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy illustrated the global reach of jihadis. Concerns about the South America triborder area—home to a large Lebanese expatriate population—serving as a safe haven and jumping-off point for Palestinian terrorists appeared justified when these two attacks occurred. Their investigation was headed by a determined judge, although progress was slight in the intervening years.

Incident:
On March 17, 1992, at 2:47
P.M.
, a Ford Fairlane with 100 kilograms of explosives detonated at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people and injuring 252. Windows were shattered within a five-block radius. Many of the injured, including several children in a school yard across the street, were hit by flying glass from a school, a museum, an apartment house, a church, a senior citizens' center, and other embassies and buildings. Only a corner of the three-story building remained standing. At least 20 cars were gutted. Gas mains were ruptured, forcing government officials to cut power to the area for fear of sparking another explosion.

The blast killed 10 Israelis, including 2 diplomats and the wives of 2 others. The rest were Argentines and one Uruguayan passerby.

Argentine president Carlos Menem blamed “a suicide commando” and attributed the bombing to an Argentine Islamic convert. He had also suggested involvement by individuals who staged a failed coup on December 3, 1990.

On March 19, 1992, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) claimed credit, saying that this was Operation Child Martyr Husayn—the son of Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, the prince of the Islamic resistance martyrs. The statement, heard on Ba'labaak Voice of the Oppressed, attributed the attack to Abu Yasir, an Argentine who converted to Islam. On March 23, 1992, the IJO in Beirut reaffirmed that it was responsible. Accompanying the Arabic typewritten statement was a video showing the embassy building before the suicide operation. IJO said that it was retaliating for Israel commandos killing Hizballah leader Musawi.

On March 25, 1992, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Brasilia denied involvement, as had a Palestinian spokesman in Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires magazine
Noticias
claimed that the Chui Palestine colony in Rio Grande do Sul, 600 kilometers from Argentina, may have served as a stopover for the terrorists. The magazine noted that PLO representative Ahmad Subhi visited the colony the previous week.

On March 20, 1992, Juan Carlos Montero, a spokesman for the Uruguayan interior ministry, said that Annette Klump was in Uruguay until four or five days before the bombing. She might have crossed over into Argentina via the bridge linking Fray Bentos, Uruguay, with Puerto Unzua, Argentina, 300 kilometers northwest of Montevideo. Her sister, Andrea Martina Klump, 34, is believed to be an explosives expert for the German Red Army Faction. Andrea was wanted in Germany for a 1989 bombing that killed a German banker. The German government had offered a $47,000 reward for her capture. The next day, Annette and the Argentine interior ministry denied involvement of the women.

On March 21, 1992, the federal police antiterrorist brigade raided a downtown apartment in Bulnes Street 260 and arrested four men for possible involvement. Chief Justice Ricardo Levene, Jr. ordered the release of four Pakistani citizens on March 23, 1992. The Pakistanis had testified before Court Secretary Alfredo Bisordi. A taxi driver, an eyewitness to the case, was unable to identify them in the police lineup. Their release order was suspended after chemical tests on their clothing indicated the presence of suspicious substances. The four were released on March 28, 1992, for lack of evidence, although charges had not been dropped. Mohammed Azam, Mohammed Nawaz, Mohammed Nawaz Chaudhary, and Azhar Igbal appeared shaken as they climbed into a Fiat Duna outside the courthouse with attorneys Federico Figueroa and Jorge Kent.