Britain Tells 340 Libyans to Get Out

LONDON — Britain today barred nearly 340 Libyan aviation students from working on aircraft for security reasons and said they will have to leave the country, and 22 other Libyan students were put on a flight for home.

The government said about 16 Libyans studying to be pilots and about 320 studying airline maintenance were affected by the new order. It said they will be expected to leave the country when their visas expire in a few months.

The 22 Libyans expelled today had been detained earlier in the week for alleged revolutionary activity. They included a student pilot who reportedly offered to form suicide squads to attack U.S. targets.

They were escorted aboard a Libyan Arab Airlines Boeing 727 by police with submachine guns.

They shook their fists and chanted slogans against President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as they walked from police vans to the plane at Heathrow Airport.

A member of the Libyan plane crew handed out posters and post cards showing Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi with his adopted 15-month-old daughter, who doctors and officials in Libya say was killed in the April 15 U.S. air raid.

“Daddy, you loved me, Reagan killed me,” the caption on one of the cards said.

Thatcher backed the raid and allowed U.S. planes based in Britain to take part.

Her government did not order the approximately 336 Libyans affected by today’s order to leave immediately, but it barred them from working on airplanes or being in airports.

“The effect of these measures will be that such trainees will be unable to complete their courses or obtain qualifications,” Thatcher said in a written statement to the House of Commons. “In that event, their current basis of stay will no longer exist, and they will be expected to leave.”

Thatcher said the government will deport the aviation students if they fail to leave voluntarily.

Meanwhile, other West European countries moved to implement a Common Market decision to reduce the size of Libyan embassies in their countries in response to suspected Libyan involvement in international terrorism.

Spain ordered the Libyan commercial attache to Madrid and two Libyan Embassy administrators to leave the country “for taking part in activities incompatible with their functions.” It also ordered eight Libyan teachers and students to leave “because of their relation to activities contrary to state security.” It did not elaborate on the allegations.

France said it plans to begin reducing the number of Libyan diplomatic personnel but did not give a specific number.

In another development, a telephone caller in Beirut representing an unknown organization called “The Revolution Continues” claimed responsibility today for the bombing of a British Airways office in London on Thursday.

“We declare our responsibility for the operation that took place in London against the American and British Airways as a retaliation for the crimes committed by the American and British governments against the Palestinian and Libyan peoples,” said the caller to an international news agency.

No one was hurt in the early-morning blast just off Oxford Street, one of central London’s busiest shopping streets.