Musbah Eter
 Musbah Eter  (spook) | |
|---|---|
 CIA/ESO double agent | |
| Born | Musbah Abdulghasem Eter |
Musbah Eter is a Libyan External Security Organisation (ESO) intelligence agent (also believed to have been a CIA agent) who was convicted in 2001 of carrying out the 5 April 1986 La Belle discotheque bombing in West Berlin, killing two US servicemen and a Turkish woman. Eter accused his compatriot Abu Agila Mas'ud of constructing the La Belle bomb.
In Ken Dornstein's film "My Brother's Bomber", broadcast in October 2015, Musbah Eter was reported to have claimed that both Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Mas'ud were responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. Quite why he kept quiet for so long remains a mystery, according to John Ashton.[1]
Stasi files
Early reports (from the US and Israel) blamed Libya for the attack on the nightclub. However, the trail went cold until the 1990 reunification of Germany and the subsequent opening up of the East's secret service archives. The Stasi files led prosecutors to Musbah Eter, who had worked at the Libyan embassy in communist East Berlin.
Eter was persuaded to give evidence, but he remained a defendant because he only gave limited co-operation, according to the prosecution. The Stasi files listed him as an agent, and prosecutors said he was the Libyan spy agency ESO's main contact at the embassy.
1997 trial
Musbah Eter and four other suspects were arrested in 1996 in Lebanon, Italy, Greece and Berlin, and put on trial a year later. After a four-year trial, often described as murky, Musbah Eter was finally sentenced to 12 years in prison for aiding and abetting attempted murder.
Two other Libyan embassy workers also received convictions for attempted murder: Palestinian Yasser Shraydi, accused of being the ringleader, and the Lebanese-born German, Ali Chanaa, who doubled as a Stasi agent. Chanaa's German wife, Verena, was the only defendant found guilty of murder, after the prosecution showed she had planted the bomb. She was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.
Prosecutors said the three men had assembled the bomb in the Chanaas' flat. The explosive was said to have been brought into West Berlin in a Libyan diplomatic bag. Verena Chanaa and her sister, Andrea Haeusler, carried it into the La Belle in a travel bag and left five minutes before it exploded. Ms Haeusler was acquitted because it could not be proved that she knew a bomb was in the bag.
Against the other four, the evidence cited included intercepted radio transmissions from Tripoli to the embassy in East Berlin, surveillance records on Eter and Shraydi and reports on the Libyan embassy's activities compiled by Chanaa. There were also receipts for money allegedly paid to the Chanaas for the attack on La Belle, secretly photocopied by the Stasi.
No Gaddafi proof
But the prosecution was unable to prove that Colonel Gaddafi was behind the attack - a failure which the court blamed on the "limited willingness" of the German and US governments to share intelligence.[2]
