According to Tom Zwart, a human rights professor and member of the consultancy, it is legally “hard” to prove that Gaddafi was behind the attack. “Scientific research has been done into the involvement of Gaddafi and his regime. In 2000 an important book was published by Simon Reyes, One day in September, in which you see evidence of Gaddafi’s involvement for the first time. Subsequent investigations have confirmed that.”
“Gaddafi has trained members of the Palestinian Black September movement in Libya. And after the attack, he received the three surviving terrorists as heroes. Some have continued to live there. This is legally sufficient to speak of co-perpetration.”
Many more indications have surfaced over the years that Gaddafi supported the attack. For example, some terrorists entered Germany with Libyan passports and the weapons were allegedly smuggled into the Libyan diplomatic post. But according to Zwart, those claims cannot yet be sufficiently substantiated in legal proceedings. “But what we have is enough.”
Libya paid damages earlier
The claim of the relatives has been submitted to the so-called “Libya Sanctions Committee” through Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan. That committee, which comes directly under the Security Council, has managed the assets of Gaddafi and his regime since 2011, when tens of billions of dollars and euros were frozen worldwide.
Erdan presents all the evidence of Gaddafi’s involvement in a letter to the UN and concludes that Libya was responsible for the attack. According to the ambassador, Gaddafi also gave $5 million to then-leader of the Palestinian organization PLO, Yasser Arafat, “in recognition of the mass execution of Israeli athletes”.
Libya has previously paid damages in compensation for terrorist attacks that Gaddafi had supported. A well-known example is the attack on the American PanAm aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988, says lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops.
“Ultimately, Libya was then also persuaded through the United Nations to pay compensation. In total, that concerned 2.7 billion dollars, divided among all killed passengers and crew members. Each received 10 million dollars. Hence this claim for the eleven Israeli athletes of $110 million.”
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