West Berlin discotheque bombing
The West Berlin discotheque bombing occurred on April 5, 1986, when a bomb exploded in the La Belle nightclub, a popular venue for U.S. servicemen. The attack resulted in the immediate deaths of one American soldier and a Turkish woman, with more than two hundred others injured. In the ensuing investigation, various leads were pursued, including connections to neo-Nazi groups, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Libyan agents—especially in response to a recent American naval attack in the Gulf of Sidra. The bombing was leveraged by the U.S. government as justification for military strikes against Libya, which were met with mixed reactions internationally. In the years following the attack, four individuals were convicted of involvement, although questions about the evidence and motivations remained. The incident highlighted the complexities of international terrorism and retaliation during the Cold War, shaping U.S. foreign policy in subsequent decades. The aftermath of the bombing also drew attention to the broader implications of military responses to attacks attributed to terrorism.
West Berlin discotheque bombing
The Event A terrorist bomb explodes in a nightclub frequented by American servicemen
Date April 5, 1986
Place La Belle nightclub, West Berlin
Media-orchestrated outrage at this event generated support for the Reagan administration’s increasingly aggressive stance toward alleged foci of terrorism in the Middle East.
At 1:40 a.m. on April 5, 1986, a terrorist bomb exploded in the crowded La Belle nightclub in West Berlin, an establishment frequented by U.S. servicemen. One American soldier and a Turkish woman were killed outright, and more than two hundred people were injured, some seriously. A second American later died of injuries.
No organization claimed responsibility for the bombing. German investigators pursued several leads, including neo-Nazi German nationalists, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Libyan agents seeking revenge for an American naval attack in the Gulf of Sidra in late March. Seizing upon the Libyan connection and citing two coded messages emanating from the Libyan embassy in Berlin, the United States used the La Belle nightclub bombing as justification for an aerial attack on Tripoli and Benghazi on April 15.
That attack occurred as the Cold War threat of the Soviet Union was on the wane, and the Ronald Reagan administration sought to replace it with the threat of international terrorism. Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, who actively supported the PLO and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), was an obvious target. A majority of Americans approved of the action, but international reaction was mainly negative.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, examination of East German Stasi (secret police) files led German and American investigators to Libyan Musbar Eter, who implicated Palestinian Yasser Chraidi, a driver at the Libyan embassy in East Berlin in 1986; Ali Chanaa, a Lebanese-born German citizen who worked for the Stasi; and Verena Chanaa, his German wife. Arraigned in 1996, the four were convicted in November, 2001, of murder and attempted murder after a lengthy trial described by commentators as murky. A 1998 documentary for German ZDF television claimed that Eter worked for both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israeli intelligence, that Chraidi was not the mastermind and possibly was innocent, and that evidence pointed to several people who were never prosecuted. Following the verdict, Qaddafi agreed to pay compensation to German victims of the bombing as part of a German-Libyan commercial treaty, but he denied direct Libyan responsibility for the attack. American victims have yet to be compensated.
Impact
The bombing provided justification for a military attack on Libya. After having faded from the public consciousness, the incident assumed fresh immediacy following the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which prompted American missile strikes against alleged terrorist facilities in Afghanistan and the Sudan. The La Belle bombing and its aftermath established a pattern of immediate and massive American retaliation against targets whose connection to the terrorist attack was never subsequently proven.
Bibliography
Chomsky, Noam. Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World. New York: Black Rose Books, 1987.
Davis, Briant. Qaddafi, Terrorism, and the Origins of the U.S. Attack on Libya. New York: Praeger, 1996.
Kaldor, Mary, and Paul Anderson. Mad Dogs: The U.S. Raids on Libya. London: Pluto Press, 1986.
St. John, Ronald Bruce. Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002.