BERLIN -- The trial of a man accused of taking part in the 1986 'La Belle' disco bombing in Berlin collapsed Monday after a key witness said he was afraid to testify in Germany.
Judge Wolfgang Hueller ordered the trial halted and the defendent, Imad Mahmoud, 37, a Palestinian national, set free.
Hueller said the court, however, would take evidence from the witness in Norway and said a new trial for Mahmoud would be called, probably in the fall.
Mahmoud had been accused of taking part in April 5, 1986, bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin, which killed two U.S. citizens and a Turkish woman and injured 230 people.
The trial collapsed after a key witness -- an unnamed Palestinian national living in Norway -- refused to come to Berlin to testify on grounds he feared for the lives of himself and his wife and children in Algeria.
State prosecutors said the witness has evidence that the Libyan Embassy in former Communist East Berlin planned the bombing of the La Belle disco, which was popular among U.S. troops in West Berlin.
Detlev Mehlis, a Berlin government prosecutor, said the witness told him Libyan agents planned to carry out an attack on U.S. military personnel in West Berlin that would 'kill as many people as possible.'
Prosecutors say two diplomats at the former Libyan Embassy are suspected of having planted the bomb at the disco.
Both men left East Berlin before the Oct. 3, 1990, German unification.
The La Belle bombing led to a sharp worsening of relations between the United States and Libya.
Ten days after the attack, former President Ronald Reagan ordered U. S. military aircraft to bomb the Libyan capital Tripoli and the port city of Bengazi.
Walter Venedy, the lawyer defending Mahmoud, said testimony by the witness in Norway also would implicate former East German, West German and U.S. intelligence sources.
