Libyans Invite French Accuser to Hear Their Side

The Libyan government Wednesday invited the French judge who recently accused senior Libyan officials of masterminding the 1989 bombing of a French airliner to visit Libya so they can answer his charges.

Attorneys representing the Libyan government said they will guarantee the safety of the investigative magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, if he goes to Libya.

“We have invited the judge to go to Libya to carry out the widest possible investigation and ask any questions he wants,” attorney Christian Charriere-Bournazel, who represents Libyan interests in France, said in Paris.

French officials refused to respond publicly to the Libyan invitation, but one source close to the case described it as a “diversion.”

In recent days, Bruguiere, who is the chief French jurist in charge of terrorism cases, asked for extra protection from police after he received what he described as a threatening letter in the case involving the bombing of a French UTA DC-10 airliner over the Sahara desert on Sept 19, 1989. All of the 170 passengers and crew died on the plane when it exploded in midair en route to Paris from Brazzaville, Congo, with a stopover in N’Djamena, Chad.

The case is believed by French and U.S. officials to be linked to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland that killed 270 people.

On Oct. 30, Bruguiere issued international arrest warrants for four Libyan officials, including the brother-in-law of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi, in connection with the UTA case. Libya has officially denied the charges.

On Monday, the Libyan ambassador to France, Saad Mujher, criticized Bruguiere for not contacting “competent authorities” in Libya before issuing the international warrants for Kadafi brother-in-law Abdallah Senoussi, deputy Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa and two other officials. Senoussi and Koussa are considered the No. 2 and No. 3 officials in Libyan intelligence.

Mujher, quoted in the French newspaper Le Figaro, also criticized Bruguiere “for having divulged, in a theatrical manner, the secrets of the investigation before it is concluded.”

Bruguiere, an unusually high-profile French jurist who has handled some of the more sensational cases in recent years, had police make a short movie of his investigation into the UTA airline bombing to show to families of the victims. Regularly featured in the French press, Bruguiere is privately criticized by some officials in the French government for courting publicity and interfering in French diplomacy.

The judge’s international warrants in the UTA case, for example, came only days after French Foreign Affairs Minister Roland Dumas, speaking before his fellow foreign ministers in the European Community, called for “turning a new page” in relations with Libya.