A new book by French journalist, historian and author Henri Weill accuses the French secret service of perpetrating the 1980 attacks against the Libyan Arab Airlines office and the Libyan Cultural Institute in Valletta.

The book also describes how agents of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service, SDECE) went on to purchase a yacht in Malta that was used in another operation that destroyed a Libyan naval vessel in the Italian port of Genoa.

The author also describes how responsibility for the attacks had been claimed by the so-called Maltese Liberation Front, fighting against Libyan ambitions for Malta, in communications with the international press.

On the night between 6 and 7 July 1980, a bomb destroyed the offices of Libyan Arab Airlines in Freedom Square, and the Libyan Cultural Institute in Palace Square was the subject of an arson attempt.

Both incidents, according to Weill, were carried out by the SDECE as part of its mission to thwart Libya’s financing of international terrorism and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s ambitions to “export his revolution”.

At around 3am on 7 July 1980, the blast was heard from a bomb placed at the Libyan Arab Airlines office at City Gate, where the office is still located today. Maltese press reports from the time describe how the explosion destroyed the premises, shook the entire block and shattered shop and home windows. Such was its force, that the bomb blew the office’s metal shutter to the other side of the square.

Later the same morning, the Libyan Cultural Institute suffered minor fire damage in an unsuccessful arson attempt. The premises were considerably damaged again, five years later, in December 1985, by a TNT bomb that devastated the building’s entire ground floor.

According to the book, Trente ans, deux mois – Du journalisme au cabinet d’Eric Besson, French press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) received a communiqué, in Italian, at its Rome office claiming responsibility for the two attacks in July purportedly on behalf of the “Maltese Liberation Front”.

The attacks, the communiqué said, were in response to the “Jamahiriya’s assault”, when Libya, as part of its continental shelf and oil rights dispute with Malta, sent a gunboat and submarine to stop oil giant Texaco from exploring the Medina Bank on behalf of Malta earlier that year.

Weill goes on to describe how, following the July incidents, SDECE agents then purchased a yacht in Malta, through a company located in Liechtenstein with a Swiss bank account, and proceeded to Elba, where they were joined by two divers.

The target, according to Weill, was what was described as the “Jamahiriya fleet’s flagship” the Dat Assawari, which was berthed in the Italian port of Genoa. Weill says that on the night between 28 and 29 October, the divers placed a 30-kilo explosives charge on the Dat Assawari’s keel, which destroyed the frigate. The crew was on shore at the time and no one was injured.

On 31 October, according to the book, AFP’s Rome office received an anonymous phone call on behalf of the “Maltese Liberation Front”, reportedly stating: “We will continue our action until Malta is liberated from imperialist Libya.”