La Belle (discotheque)

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Memorial plaque with the inscription "On April 5, 1986, young people were murdered in this house by a criminal bomb attack"
La Belle memorial plaque on Hauptstrasse  78 in Berlin-Friedenau

La Belle was a discotheque in Hauptstrasse  78 in the Berlin district of Friedenau , on which a bomb attack was carried out on the night of April 4 to 5, 1986, in which three people were killed. The then government of Libya under Muammar al-Gaddafi is suspected to have commissioned the attack .

building

The Roxy Palace , on the ground floor of which was the La Belle discotheque

The building in which La Belle was located was built in 1929 as a steel frame construction under the name Roxy-Palast as an office and commercial building with an adjoining movie theater with 1106 seats. It is considered the main work of New Objectivity by the architect Martin Punitzer . The discotheque was in the business wing of the building.

attack

La Belle was a popular discotheque among US soldiers stationed in Berlin. Spread over the evening and night that followed payday with the US Army , there were a total of around 500 visitors in the building. At around 1:45 a.m., the three kilogram explosive device, which was equipped with nails and pieces of iron, was detonated by an electronic detonator. The restaurant, which was mostly visited by African-American members of the US armed forces , and in which around 260 guests were staying at the time, was completely destroyed. The US soldier Kenneth T. Ford and the Turkish visitor Nermin Hannay died immediately, another US soldier, James E. Goins, died shortly afterwards in hospital. 28 people were seriously injured, and around 250 people present tore their eardrum due to the air pressure .

The discotheque was no longer operated after the attack.

Perpetration and litigation

According to West German and US investigation results, the attack was organized by the Libyan People's Office (the Libyan embassy 's own name ) in East Berlin . After German reunification , files from the Ministry for State Security supported this thesis. The Citizens' Bureau revealed that in 1986 the GDR's state security handed over seized explosives to an Arab terrorist in the knowledge that he would destroy the La Belle discotheque.

Doubts were also expressed about Libya's perpetration. There were investigation results that indicated Syria's involvement , as the West Berlin police and the United States Department of State announced in 1988. In this context, a 27-year-old German was arrested in Lübeck in early 1988 .

In 1992 there were first legal charges against masterminds of the assassination attempt. However, the trial was dropped in 1993. In 1997 a new trial began, at the end of which in November 2001 the Berlin Regional Court sentenced the four perpetrators. The main culprit, Verena Chanaa, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for triple murder and attempted murder. She had planted the bomb, but claimed that she believed the device was simply a smoke bomb .

“I didn't even know what I was doing. I just thought I was helping to scare the Americans. "

- Verena Chanaa, main culprit

The motive for her act: She is said to have hoped to win back the favor of Ali Chanaa, with whom she had been divorced since 1984. Because aid to the murders of Yasser Shraydi, Musbah Eter and Ali Chanaa were sentenced to 14 and 12 years in prison. The fifth defendant Andrea Häusler (sister of Verena Chanaa) was acquitted.

There were a large number of lawyers who acted as co-plaintiffs for the victims of the attack in the court proceedings before the Berlin Regional Court against those responsible. The Berlin attorney Andreas Schulz was decisive for the conviction of the accused, in addition to the Berlin chief public prosecutor Detlev Mehlis . Not least by finding secret documents, he managed to get the Berlin Regional Court to determine that it was convinced that the Libyan secret service planned and carried out the attack.

The public prosecutor's office appealed against the verdict in order to obtain a life sentence. On June 24, 2004, however, the 5th criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice in Leipzig upheld the judgments of the regional court; they became legally binding . The Federal Court of Justice confirmed the political aspect of the act. The judges gave the state of Libya joint responsibility for the attack. In the grounds of the judgment, it is said that the sentence should take into account "that the actual main perpetrators - Libyan masterminds and backers - were not on trial". The court was convinced that Libyan officials planned the attack and brought the explosives to Berlin.

A US journalist believed that after years of investigative research he had found out the identity of the perpetrator who is said to have built the bombs for the attack on the La Belle discotheque in Berlin and the plane that crashed over Lockerbie . Abu Agila Mas'ud was an intelligence officer under Gaddafi and was on trial in Tripoli for crimes against the people of Libya in the fall of 2015 . He was also accused of building bombs that were used against opposition activists.

Reactions

On the day after the attack, US President Ronald Reagan accused the Libyan revolutionary leader and de facto head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi of having ordered the assassination attempt in order to sink two Libyan warships by US forces in March 1986 as part of Operation Attain Document to avenge. The US government probably came to this conclusion through information obtained in the context of Operation Rubicon , as it was able to read the encrypted communication of the Libyan embassy. On April 12, 1986, the three western allies decided on extensive measures to protect the city for West Berlin in coordination with the Berlin Senate due to the La Belle attack. On April 13, 1986, the Libyan Foreign Minister Hassan al-Mansur visited Syria. The Syrian government announced that it would support Libya in the event of US military action.

On April 14, 1986, 24 fighter jets took off from Lakenheath and Upper Heyford Air Force Bases in Great Britain with the aim of Tripoli in Libya. It was the beginning of Operation El Dorado Canyon , the bombing of the Libyan capital Tripoli and the city of Benghazi , which also killed 15 civilians. Two US soldiers also lost their lives. It is claimed that this retaliation by President Reagan one of the reasons for the later Lockerbie bombing of the PanAm to have been -Flight 103 on 21 December 1988th

Compensation

Since the Berlin Regional Court found that the Libyan secret service had planned and carried out the attack, the victims succeeded in persuading the Foreign Office to use international law to ensure that Libya pays compensation on behalf of German and other European victims . On August 17, 2003, Libya (represented by the Gaddafi Foundation ) signaled that it was ready to enter into negotiations on compensation payments for the non-American victims. One year later, on August 10, 2004, Libya finally agreed to pay a total of 35 million US dollars to the 168 victims and survivors in Germany.

The 79 American victims and their surviving dependents , represented by attorney Andreas Schulz together with the American law firms PattonBoggs and Stein Mitchell & Mezzines, were only able to pay compensation in the amount of 280 million US dollars four years later, in November 2008 Enforce Libya. Compared to the compensation that the group of non-Americans received, the amount of compensation paid to the US citizens was many times as much, namely around three million US dollars per person, of which the US citizens, however, about a third to the Americans Lawyers had to submit (contingency fee agreement). The group of Germans (non-US Americans) had to be satisfied with comparatively low compensation payments, although there were differences in the amount of compensation depending on the injuries.

Web links

Commons : La Belle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b BGH 5 StR 306/03 - judgment of June 24, 2004
  2. ↑ Unholy Alliance with Islamic Terror. In: BZ , September 23, 2001
  3. ↑ German Is Seized In Disco Bombing . In: The New York Times , January 12, 1988.
  4. ↑ Bomb Suspect Hero; Syria Tie Probed . In: Los Angeles Times , January 12, 1988.
  5. ↑ The Avenger . In: The New Yorker , September 28, 2015
  6. ↑ Fatina Keilani: Compensation with double standards. In: Der Tagesspiegel . November 24, 2008, accessed January 29, 2014 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 28 ′ 23 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 12 ″  E