Libya

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US Bombing of Libya

Libyan relations with the United States deteriorated in the early 1980s. In 1981 two Libyan fighter planes were shot down by US Navy jets over the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claimed as territorial waters. In 1982 the United States imposed an embargo on Libyan oil imports. Another encounter in the Gulf of Sidra in March 1986 resulted in the destruction of two Libyan ships by US Navy ships.

In April, responding to heightened terrorism in Europe apparently directed by Libya against Americans, the United States bombed sites in Libya declared by President Ronald Reagan to be “terrorist centres”. Qaddafi’s home at one of the barracks was damaged and his infant daughter was killed, but the major damage was to other military sites.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Libya urged moderation, opposing both Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent use of force against Iraq. Ties with Egypt were strengthened during 1991, but those with the United States worsened, especially in 1992 when it was charged that Libya was manufacturing chemical weapons.

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Sanctions Imposed

In April 1992 UN sanctions were imposed against Libya for its refusal to extradite the two men suspected of the bombing on December 21, 1988, of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. The United States and Britain had accused two Libyans, Lameen Fhaima and Abdel-Basit Al-Megarhi, of masterminding the bombing of Flight 103 and demanded that they be tried either in the United States or Scotland. The Libyan government stated that they should only be tried by Scottish judges in an international court.

The sanctions were renewed in 1993, 1994, and 1995 in the face of continuing Libyan defiance. In April 1995 a Libyan airliner, with official backing, broke UN sanctions and flew 150 pilgrims to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage; a compromise was arranged permitting pilgrims to fly on Egyptian airliners.

In November 1995 a Libyan dissident was killed in London, claimed by opponents of Qaddafi to be a political assassination. In December the Libyan regime made an apparent offer to enter discussions with the British government over Libya’s periodic supply of weapons to the IRA.

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Sanctions Reinforced

In 1996 the UN Security Council again renewed sanctions against Libya. In addition, the United States extended economic sanctions following allegations that Libyan chemical warfare installations were under construction south-east of Tripoli. The same year, hundreds of businessmen were arrested, accused by Qaddafi of corruption and trading in foreign goods. In October, during a visit by the Turkish prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, Qaddafi criticized Turkey for its treatment of its Kurdish community and for allowing the United States to maintain air bases in Turkey.

The following year six military officers and two civilians were executed, most likely in retaliation for an attempted coup against Qaddafi in October 1993. In September 1997 Arab foreign ministers agreed to break the UN sanctions by allowing planes carrying Qaddafi to land on their territory and by permitting flights for pilgrims and humanitarian missions. The General People's Congress appointed Mohammed Ahmed al-Mangoush as Secretary of the General People's Committee in December 1997; the post equates approximately with that of prime minister.

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Suspension of Sanctions

The air embargo on Libya was defied once more in July 1998 when two aircraft, carrying the President of Niger and the President of Chad, landed in Tripoli in violation of UN sanctions. However a flight carrying President Mubarak of Egypt had obtained UN permission on humanitarian grounds, as it also carried five doctors, who were to treat Colonel Qaddafi.

Libya’s continued refusal to hand over the two men accused of the Lockerbie bombing had isolated the country politically and economically during the late 1990s, despite some efforts to improve the country’s international pariah status, including the release of political prisoners. In 1998 the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that it had jurisdiction over the dispute. In April 1999, the two Libyans finally surrendered to UN officials. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah were flown from Tripoli to the Netherlands where they were charged by Scottish authorities at Camp Zeist, near Utrecht, in a former military base. The base had been designated Scottish soil to enable the trial to be conducted under the jurisdiction of Scottish law. The surrender of the two men was the culmination of over ten years of discussion and diplomatic negotiation, and led to the suspension of UN sanctions that had been imposed on Libya in 1992.

Full diplomatic relations between Libya and the United Kingdom, which had been severed since the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher, a young British police officer, outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984, were finally re-established in July 1999, after Libyan authorities agreed to compensate her family.

The Libyan government underwent fundamental changes in March 2000, in a bid to bring it closer to the people. Decentralization affected most of the ministries, known as people's committees, which were abolished and their authority devolved to provincial bodies. Some central ministries, including those of foreign affairs, finances, information, justice, and security, remained in place, and a new body, a Ministry for African Unity, was formed.

In January 2001, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing after an 84-day trial; the following year he lost his appeal against the conviction. His co-accused, Al-amin Fhimah, was acquitted. Talks were held in February to discuss the permanent lifting of UN sanctions; the UK and US both maintained that a major pre-condition should be compensation paid by Libya to the families of the Lockerbie victims.

Libyan troops were sent into Central African Republic to help quash the coup attempt there against the president, Ange-Felix Patassé in May 2001. The following September the two countries signed a 99-year economic deal that gives Libya rights to prospect for gold, oil, and diamonds on the lands of its mineral-rich near-neighbour.

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Towards Reform

Diplomatically, Libya was gradually leaving the isolation imposed upon it since the early 1990s, and representations from foreign ministries continued, along with a visit from Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. In 2003 Libya was elected to chair the United Nations Human Rights Commission, something of a coup for a country still tarred in many quarters with being a major violator of human rights. The announcement in December 2003 that Libya would abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with international weapons monitors enhanced the country’s prospects of ending its alienation from the West, reopening the access to investment and technology that sanctions had closed. In early 2004 Libya agreed to provide compensation to families for the deaths of French passengers onboard an aircraft that was bombed in 1989. British prime minister Tony Blair paid a visit to the country in March to hold a meeting with Qaddafi and in November French president Jacques Chirac made a visit. After three years as prime minister, Shukri Ghanem was dismissed for overstepping the pace of free market reforms. He was replaced by Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmudi, a former health minister.