WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- A group of U.S. military veterans injured in a Libyan-backed terror bombing in 1986 are protesting the decision to take the Arab nation off the terror list and re-open diplomatic relations, despite the fact that it has never acknowledged responsibility for the attack or compensated its victims.
"Our national tradition has always been to leave no soldier behind. That tradition has been ignored by President Bush," said the veterans in a statement.
On April 5, 1986, a bomb left in the La Belle Discotheque, a bar popular with U.S. troops in West Berlin, exploded, killing a Turkish woman and two U.S. servicemen and injuring more 200 others, including dozens of local civilians.
Nine days later -- Libyan complicity established, according to news reports since, by signals intercepts -- the United States launched an air raid against Libyan leadership targets, including the home of its mercurial strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The raids killed about 40 people, including Gadhafi's adopted daughter.
In November 2001, after a four-year trial, a German court convicted four people, including a Libyan diplomat, of the bombing. The judge said the attack had been planned by Libyan intelligence officials in high-ranking positions in the Libyan embassy in East Berlin.
But the Libyan government has never publicly acknowledged a role in the attack, as it has done in regard to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The U.S. government publicly demanded that Libya settle compensation claims by the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing as a pre-condition to any thaw in relations, but it made no such demand in relation to the La Belle bombing.
"It saddens me that they are forgetting about the troops," retired U.S. Army Spc. John Jackson told United Press International. "It sends a bad message to people in U.S. uniform now and to people who might be thinking about joining.
"It says they might be forgotten one day, too."
Jackson suffered blunt force trauma, concussion, burns over much of his head and cuts to his hands, arms and knees. The blast perforated his right eardrum leaving him partially deaf, and leading to tinnitus, according to a medical evaluation provided by his lawyer. Army discharge papers rate him 20 percent disabled.
Jackson said he was "shocked" to learn this week that the United States was rescinding Libya's designation as a state-sponsor of terrorism, removing it from another list of nations not cooperating with U.S. anti-terrorist efforts and planning to upgrade the U.S. liaison office in the Libyan capital Tripoli to an embassy.
"Col. Gadhafi ... has a history of saying one thing and doing something else," he said. "I don't see how we can trust him."
He added that the news had "brought a lot of things back. I am still suffering. The last few days have not been good for my health."
The State Department's press office for Near Eastern affairs did not return calls and e-mails seeking a response.
Thomas Fay, an attorney representing Jackson and 38 other survivors of the bombing, as well as the family of one of the servicemen killed, told UPI that the difference in treatment for the two groups of victims was, at least in part, because of their economic status.
"The people we represent are U.S. armed forces, mostly non-commissioned personnel. The people on Pan Am 103 were businessmen ... kids coming back from skiing vacations or ... schools abroad.
"To be blunt about it, the people (on flight 103) were much better off than our guys and the government stuck in there for them," he said.
Fay said the German and Turkish governments had pursued -- and won -- compensation for their citizens who had been victims. "Our position has always been," he said of the victims and those that represent them, "that (Libya) should not get off the terrorist list until these issues have been dealt with" in regard to U.S. victims, too.
In 2001, Fay's clients launched a lawsuit against Libya, using a specially written amendment to U.S. law designed to allow victims of terrorist attacks to sue the state sponsors of such crimes.
The case was stayed for about 18 months while the parties tried unsuccessfully to reach a settlement, he said, and the court was now pondering a motion from the Libyans to dismiss the suit.
