Libya Expels 36 European Envoys, Assails Sanctions

Moammar Kadafi’s government said Monday that it is expelling 36 staff members of seven West European embassies in retaliation for diplomatic sanctions imposed on Libya by those governments.

The official Libyan news agency said that diplomats from the Italian, West German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Belgian and Danish embassies are being told to leave within 10 days.

Libya’s Foreign Ministry said the expulsions are “in retaliation for the oppressive measures taken by European countries, under pressure from the United States, against members of Libyan People’s Bureaus (embassies) in Europe on the pretext of terrorism.”

Member governments of the 12-nation European Communities have ordered dozens of Libyan diplomats out since April 21, when the Europeans decided on the sanctions in response to what they regarded as Libyan sponsorship of terrorism. Their decision followed the April 15 U.S. bombing raid on Libya in retaliation for the April 5 terrorist bombing of a West Berlin discotheque crowded with GIs, for which Washington has blamed Libya.

Leaders of the United States, Britain, Canada, West Germany, France, Italy and Japan, at a meeting in Tokyo last week, announced measures against nations sponsoring or supporting terrorism and named Libya as one of them.

Libya said the Tokyo measures are tantamount to a declaration of war.

Since then, Western European nations have tightened controls and restricted activity by Libyan diplomats and citizens. Several have ordered Libyan diplomats to leave.

Spain last Friday expelled the Libyan consul general, saying he had links with an extremist Spanish army colonel. That action reduced reducing Libya’s representation in Madrid to three.

In another development, a French prosecutor said Monday that a suspected Tunisian terrorist turned in by one of his girlfriends has confessed to the bombings of department stores in Paris and London and an Israeli bank in Paris.

Habib Maamar, 24, was charged Monday with possession of explosives and was being held in Nancy, about 200 miles east of Paris.

Nancy Prosecutor Jean Charretier said Maamar admitted a role in the bombings of Marks & Spencer department stores in Paris and London and the bombing of Israel’s Bank Leumi branch in Paris.

$3,000 a Month

French authorities said that it is unclear whether Maamar is a member of a terrorist group but that he has recently traveled to Baghdad, Iraq. A French news agency quoted police sources as saying Maamar was paid $3,000 a month by a pro-Iraqi Palestinian terrorist group led by a Palestinian in Baghdad identified as Abu Ibrahim.

Also in French custody were two women, Maamar’s live-in girlfriend and a second girlfriend who turned him in. They were charged with possession of explosives and harboring a criminal, Charretier said.

According to police sources, Souad Aissaoui, an Algerian, turned in Maamar to police Thursday after the pair quarreled and he tried to break into her house. The two have a young son, authorities said.

Christmas Day Bombing

The investigation grew beyond a domestic squabble, the police sources said, when Aissaoui told them that Maamar had admitted to his responsibility for the bomb that went off at the Marks & Spencer store in London on Christmas Day, 1983, injuring two people.

The woman also said Maamar admitted to her that he bombed the two sites in Paris. A bomb went off Feb. 23, 1985, in the central Paris branch of Marks & Spencer, killing a guard and injuring 14 people. A bomb damaged the Bank Leumi building Aug. 21, 1984, but there were no injuries.

According to Israeli and U.S. anti-terrorist sources, Abu Ibrahim, Maamar’s reported contact in Baghdad, is the leader of the Arab Organization of May 15, a maverick Palestinian guerrilla group named for the date of the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Abu Ibrahim’s 50 to 75 followers have carried out dozens of terrorist attacks or attempted attacks on Jewish, Israeli and Arab targets in the Middle East and Europe.

Maamar has lived illegally in the Nancy region for several years, the French police sources said.

He was held over the weekend on charges of violating French immigration laws and breaking into the home of his girlfriend while investigators continued to question him about possible involvement in terrorist activities.