UTA flight 772

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UTA flight 772
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, UTA - Union de Transports Aeriens AN1021181.jpg

The crashed DC-10-30 machine (registration number N54629) in Paris in the summer of 1985

Accident summary
Accident type Bomb attack
place Ténéré , Niger
date September 19, 1989
Fatalities 170
Survivors 0
Injured 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30
operator Union de Transports Aériens
Mark N54629
Departure airport Brazzaville
Destination airport Paris-Charles de Gaulle
Passengers 156
crew 14th
Lists of aviation accidents

The flight Union de Transports Aériens 772 was a scheduled flight of the French airline Union de Transports Aériens from Brazzaville to Paris , on which a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 was involved in a bomb attack in Niger on September 19, 1989 , killing all 170 occupants. In Brazzaville, a time-detonated bomb was deposited in the aircraft's luggage, which detonated 46 minutes after taking off from a stopover in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena . The plane crashed over the Ténéré desert, near the Bilma oasis and the Termit massif .

the accident

The DC-10 took off at 1:13 p.m. and climbed to flight level 350, around 10,700 m. At 13:59, while cruising, a bomb exploded in hold 13R, which is located in the lower front area of ​​the fuselage. The bomb was most likely hidden in a bag that had been loaded in Brazzaville. The security measures there did not comply with the prescribed guidelines of the ICAO .

Victim of the attack

170 people were killed: 54 French, 51 Congolese (48 from the Republic of the Congo, 3 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo), 25 Chadians, 9 Italians, 7 US citizens, 5 Cameroonians, 4 British, 3 Canadians, 2 Central Africans, 2 Malians, 2 Swiss, and one each Algerian, Belgian, Bolivian, Greek, Moroccan and Senegalese. Prominent victims were the wife of French tennis star Éric Deblicker, a Chadian minister and the wife of the US ambassador to Chad.

Responsible persons and consequences

Flight route and accident site of the DC-10

Various groups were held responsible for the attack, including Chadian rebels and the Shiite- Lebanese terrorist organization Islamic Jihad . Investigations later indicated that the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi was the mastermind behind the attack. His motive was retaliation for his defeat in the Libyan-Chadian War , which Gaddafi attributed, among other things, to the support of Chad by the US and France .

The French authorities named six Libyans as prime suspects, whom Tripoli refused to extradite. A Parisian circuit court was in 1999, these six Libyan men guilty of the assassination attempt carried out to have: a staff of the Libyan ambassador in Brazzaville, several intelligence officers, including the later head of the foreign intelligence Moussa Koussa , and the deputy intelligence chief of Libya, Abdullah al-Senussi , a Gaddafi's brother-in-law. The accused were convicted in absentia because Libya did not extradite them to France and have not been able to leave Libya since. Libyan authorities continue to assert that they are not responsible for the attack.

In 2004, Gaddafi offered to compensate the victims' families from a foundation, with each family receiving a million dollars . Not all families accepted this compensation; many felt it was blood money. The US families sued in the US and were awarded $ 6 billion in compensation by the judges. Libya appealed and in 2008 set up a $ 1.5 billion fund to separately compensate US citizens for Libyan terrorist acts - including the Lockerbie and La Belle attacks .

monument

With the help of local people, relatives of the victims erected a memorial site in May and June 2007 made of dark stones, mirrors and the remains of the plane that crashed, which could still be found on site. The large-scale monument can also be seen on satellite images in Google Maps .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  2. Accident report of the French authorities (PDF)
  3. List of victims (French)
  4. ^ Ian Black: Gaddafi's confidant is Abdullah Senussi, a brutal right-hand man. Gaddafi's ruthless brother-in-law is likely to be advising the Libyan leader on his response to the uprising, analysts say. In: The Guardian. February 22, 2011, accessed May 17, 2011 .
  5. Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism. Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1997. In: Archive Site for State Department information prior to January 20, 2001. US State Department, accessed June 12, 2011 .
  6. ^ Court Awards US Victims More Than $ 6 Billion for 1989 Libyan Terrorist Bombing of French Airliner That Killed 170 People Over African Desert. (No longer available online.) In: news releases. PR Newswire , Jan. 15, 2008, archived from the original on June 5, 2011 ; Retrieved June 12, 2011 (according to Crowell & Moring ).
  7. ^ The Sahara memorial seen from space. bbc.com, January 22, 2014, accessed September 20, 2018 .
  8. Monument on Google Maps. Retrieved November 4, 2013 .

Coordinates: 16 ° 51 ′ 53.7 ″  N , 11 ° 57 ′ 13.5 ″  E