Holdout in a People's Bureau

Intimidating "students"and worries about death squads

Another embassy went under siege last week. This time the site was Washington, D.C., and it was Americans, for a change, who were laying the siege. At the Libyan embassy in the nation's capital, four diplomats had rejected a State Department ultimatum to quit the country after they were officially declared "unacceptable."

The four, who range in age from 29 to 37, were accused of harassing other Libyans in the U.S. with threats of physical harm and even death unless they returned home. "We asked them to leave because they were engaged in contemptible and wholly unacceptable activities," said a State Department spokesman. The Libyans responded by insisting that they were students rather than diplomats, and holed up inside the five-story, red-brick embassy, which they refer to as a People's Bureau. Eight carloads of police and FBI agents took up positions around the building, waiting to seize the aging "students" if they set foot outside. The standoff abruptly ended when the Libyan government announced that it had agreed to recall its four nationals. At a press conference, the pseudo diplomats denied the charges against them and expressed regret at having to leave the U.S. Said one: "We wanted to finish our studies."

Still skeptical, the State Department believes the four agents were linked to a larger network of Libyan terrorists who are plotting to eliminate opponents of Libya's strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Within Libya this year, up to 2,000 people have been arrested for alleged disloyalty to Gaddafi. The mercurial colonel's latest project is building a $3 billion protective wall along 187 miles of Libya's border with Egypt. Gaddafi, whose erratic rule seems to be widely resented by his fellow citizens, has warned Libyan dissidents abroad that they are "doomed" unless they return home by June 11 to face his justice.

Gaddafi's threat has given rise to fears that Libyan death squads may be operating overseas. Four anti-Gaddafi Libyans were murdered in Rome and London earlier this year; suspects arrested for the crimes are all fervent supporters of the colonel. At week's end a fifth Libyan dissident was assassinated when a gunman got his victim to accompany him to a Rome cafe, then pumped two bullets into his head. Italian police arrested a Libyan citizen who reportedly confessed to the murder, saying that the dissident was an "enemy of the Libyan people and of Gaddafi, which are one and the same." Though no assassinations have taken place in the U.S., when American intelligence agents began monitoring activities of the four embassy employees two months ago, they uncovered evidence of intimidating letters and calls made to other Libyans around the U.S. Said an officer at State: "We had reason to believe they would put their warnings into effect."

In London, some members of Parliament have called on the Thatcher government to close down the Libyan embassy for harboring what one M.P. calls "a gang of thugs." The U.S. has no plans to shut down Libya's embassy in Washington, though diplomatic relations between the two countries are severely strained. The Carter Administration drastically reduced the staff of the American mission in Tripoli after it was set on fire by Libyan militants in December; the last two resident diplomats were recalled two weeks ago.

Even though the embassy siege ended peacefully, U.S. officials remain concerned that Gaddafi may be plotting some kind of revenge for the humiliation of the "students" that might include the arrest of some of the 2,000 American civilians working in Libya, most of them for oil companies. The colonel also holds another trump card for a future power play: he has threatened to cut off petroleum exports to the U.S., which depends on Libya for 3.5% of its oil.

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