Families of the victims of a 1989 French plane bombing that killed 170 people over the Sahara Desert have demanded that Libya's former foreign minister, Musa Kusa, who defected to Britain on Wednesday, be brought to Paris for questioning, dpa reported
French airline UTA's flight 772 blew up over the desert in Niger as it was was flying from N'Djamena, Chad to Paris on September 19, 1989. All 170 passengers and crew were killed.
Among the victims were 54 French people, 48 nationals of the Republic of Congo, where the flight originated, and 24 Chadians.
A French court in 1999 tried and convicted six Libyans in absentia over the attack, including Abdallah Senussi, Moamer Gaddafi's brother-in law and then deputy head of Libyan intelligence.
Despite being sought on international arrest warrants, they were never apprehended.
In 2004, the Gaddafi regime agreed to pay 1 million dollars in compensation for each of the victims.
Musa Kusa was questioned by the investigating judge in the case but was never charged.
"Today, given that the cards have been shuffled, Musa Kusa could have new revelations to make about the attack carried out by Libya against UTA's DC10, flight UT772, which could implicate other people," the association called the Families of the UTA DC10 Attack said.
He could help locate Senussi, among other things, they said, calling for the anti-terrorist section of the High Court in Paris to question him.
Kusa defected to Britain on Wednesday, arriving in the country from the Tunisian island of Djerba.
Before becoming foreign minister in 2009, the politician was head of Libya's external intelligence service.
His name has also been linked to the 1998 bombing of a US passenger plane over Lockerbie in Scotland, in which 270 people died. Scottish prosecutors are seeking to question him in connection with that attack.
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