Libya, US pay up to close books on 1980s accounts

Friday, Oct. 31, Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund to compensate families of the American victims of terrorist attacks committed in the 1980s and linked to Muammar Qaddafi. The US government agreed to pay out $300 million dollars in compensation for the 41 Libyans, including Qaddafi’s stepdaughter, killed in the retaliatory bombing of his residence ordered by President Ronald Reagan for the first attack.
The 443 American victims died in three bombing attacks attributed to Tripoli: the La Belle night spot frequented by US troops in Berlin which was blown up in 1986, the1988 Pan-Am flight which crashed over Scotland, and the French UTA airliner which blew up over Chad in 1989.
Scotland is about to release the second of the two Pan-Am bombers, Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, whom Qaddafi surrendered for trial. Megrahi, who has served 6 years of his 27-year sentence, is suffering from cancer. The second Libyan intelligence officer was acquitted earlier.
These steps close the deal negotiated by the US and UK for normalizing relations with Tripoli in return for dismantling its weapons of mass destruction systems and handing over of information on the nuclear black market ring which the father of the Pakistani bomb Dr. Ali Qader Khan ran for circles in military and intelligence.