Four people were jailed today for a disco bomb attack that led to US air raids on Libya, but the Berlin court said prosecutors had failed to prove Libyan leader Col Gadafy was implicated.
The US blamed Col Gadafy for the April 1986 Berlin disco blast that killed two US soldiers and a Turkish woman. The court said the bombing was planned by members of the Libyan secret service and workers at the Libyan Embassy in then East Berlin.
The explosion at the La Belle disco killed three people and wounded 229 people. The US launched retaliatory air strikes that month on two cities in Libya.
However, Judge Peter Marhofer said German and US secret services had refused to provide evidence implicating Col Gadafy.
The Berlin court said all four defendants plotted the attack, but it found only Verena Channa (42), a German, guilty of murder. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Yassir Chraidi (42), a Palestinian accused of being the main organiser of the attack, was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder, as were Libyan Musbah Abdulghasem Eter (44), and a Lebanese-born German, Ali Chanaa (42). Chraidi was sentenced to 14 years; Eter and Chanaa were sentenced to 12 years.
Prosecutors had sought life sentences for all four.
AP