France to seek arrest of Gaddafi over killing for murder

A French magistrate is ex-pected to issue an arrest warrant soon for the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, to question him for his alleged role in the terrorist destruction of a French airliner in 1989.

A French magistrate is ex-pected to issue an arrest warrant soon for the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, to question him for his alleged role in the terrorist destruction of a French airliner in 1989.

To the embarrassment of the French government, the Paris appeal court yesterday overruled official objections and accepted a lawsuit by victims' families accusing the Libyan leader of being an "accessory to murder".

An investigating magistrate who specialises in terrorist cases, Judge Jÿan-Louis Bruguiere, will lead the inquiry and is expected to issue an international warrant for Colonel Gaddafi's arrest.

The decision will irritate the French government, which had hoped to establish a new relationship with Colonel Gaddafi. The French and other governments had promised friendlier relations with Libya, including possible visits by the colonel to Europe, after Tripoli's role in the release of Western hostages in the Philippines last month. Since a French arrest warrant could be served in any EU country, the Libyan leader is not now likely to cross the Mediterranean in the near future.

Six Libyan government agents, including Colonel Gaddafi's brother-in-law, have already been found guilty in absentia by a French court of blowing up a Paris-bound UTA DC10 over the Niger desert in 1989, killing 170 people. The attack came one year after the destruction of a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, in Scotland, for which two Libyan agents are on trial in the Netherlands.

Attempts by UTA victims' families to begin legal action against Colonel Gaddafi had been rejected by a lower court.