/ 12 March 1999

FRANCE WANTS LIBYANS JAILED

FRANCE said on Thursday it expects Libyan leaders to uphold the life sentences handed down here against six Libyan agents for the 1989 mid-air bombing of a French UTA airliner that killed 170 people. “Libya has to uphold the verdict in line with pledges it made, notably in a letter by Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi to French President Jacques Chirac in March 1996,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said. A special court on Wednesday sentenced in absentia six Libyan agents to life in prison over the bombing. Their sentences will lapse in 20 years. Among the six accused is Abdallah Senoussi, the 47-year-old brother-in-law of Gadaffi, alleged to have planned the bombing in his role as number two in the secret service.