I’ve had only the slightest brush personally with the Libyan connection, the notorious gun running relationship between the crazed dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the IRA which finally ended in another of Tony Blair’s diplomatic exercises. In one of the later lulls in the Troubles, in a fit of optimism they re-opened the city gates of Derry after a siege of a quarter of a century. My old family home was in the street at one side of the courthouse right in the centre of the old city. Sure enough and utterly predictably they planted a bomb, a small one but packing a bigger punch than co-op mix because of Gaddafi supplied Semtex. One person badly shaken taken to hospital, roofs and windows badly damaged. By the standards of the times they were lucky. Thousands weren’t.
Nor in the end was Gaddafi who got his comeuppance, shot to death in a sewer. But Northern Ireland victims continue to lose out. It’s good be able to support a DUP initiative calling on Libyan millions frozen in London bank accounts to be released in compensation. The case was made for the umpteenth time in a scathing report by the Northern Ireland select committee, and echoed in a Sunday Telegraph by Nigel Dodds. He writes:
It was revealed this week that, in the last three years, the British government has taken £17 million in tax from £12 billion of Libyan assets linked to Colonel Gaddafi, which are frozen in the UK. There is a strong moral and legal case for this money to fund a compensation scheme for the victims of the IRA.
During the Troubles, Gaddafi armed the IRA with Semtex. He supplied weapons that undoubtedly contributed to the lengthening of the terrorist campaign. Those weapons targeted innocent citizens of the United Kingdom, cutting short some lives and changing others forever. Those people did not deserve such an injustice. Nor do they deserve the subsequent inaction which has added to their pain over the years. The victims of the IRA’s atrocities are dying without justice or recognition for the physical and mental trauma they have had to endure. Yet here is a source of revenue from which compensation could be drawn while attempts are made to progress a proper compensation scheme with Libya
Clearly the situation on the ground in Libya means finalising a deal is very difficult. But our own Government has the opportunity and the means to do something to support the victims immediately. It should act.
While justice is denied to British victims, US victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism have already been compensated, under the US-Libya Claims Settlement Agreement of 2008.
In 2004, Libya agreed to pay $1m compensation to the families of each of the 170 people killed in the bombing of UTA flight 772 in 1989.
The German government secured $35 million for those killed in the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin.
Yet no such deal has been reached for British victims following the failures of the Blair government to pursue our case properly. After all these years, our own citizens have received nothing but warm words and sympathy.
This should be an embarrassment for our government.
In the final days of her premiership, the Prime Minster should take decisive action and begin righting this terrible wrong. Progress towards a proper outcome for innocent people such as those killed or injured in the Enniskillen Remembrance day bomb would be a truly lasting legacy.
The appointment of William Shawcross as the Special Representative on this matter has been a significant achievement for the campaign. As a former chair of the Charity Commission, he is well placed to establish the facts and a template for proper redress. It is vital to establish how many victims could potentially qualify for such compensation, what levels of compensation should be requested and how the issue can be best progressed.
The Government has a clear moral duty to support our citizens, particularly those who have suffered so much. Compensation for victims of Libyan sponsored terrorism is an ongoing injustice that must be addressed.
The NI Select Committee report adds:
The Government has consistently held that it is not its responsibility to secure compensation for victims of Libyan Semtex, and that victims should pursue cases with the Libyan authorities individually. This is an untenable policy position. To state that victims have not exhausted all legal remedies ignores the reality of the current political situation in Libya, with its chaotic and unstable governance arrangements. Time has already run out for many victims. The Government must now enter into direct negotiations with the Libyan authorities to seek a compensation deal as soon as possible. (Paragraph 19) 2. Whilst we welcome the announcement of William Shawcross to begin the long overdue process of calculating the amount of compensation due to victims, this role should extend much further. The role could help ensure greater cross-government working as previously suggested by the Minister but should also negotiate to secure a compensation agreement. Once the amount of compensation has been calculated, the Special Adviser must also have a role in securing compensation, espousing the claims of victims directly with the Libyan Government.
Now I’d be pretty sure there’s not a snowball’s chance of hell for compensation to be paid out. Nigel is going through the motions just in case.. one day..
First there’s the reaction of what passes for the Libyan regime currently under siege in Tripoli, as reported last year in the Irish Times
Any attempt by the British government to use frozen Libyan assets in England to compensate IRA victims of weapons and explosives smuggled into Northern Ireland from Libya would be in breach of United Nations resolutions, a senior Libyan diplomat has insisted.
As an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Bill proceeds through Westminster to allow a portion of about £10-12 billion (€11.4 – €13.6 billion) of frozen assets to be used to assist IRA victims, the Libyan chargé d’affaires to the, UN Elmahdi S Elmajerbi stated that such action would be legally, ethically and morally wrong.
“The [Libyan] government of national accord is confident that the government of the United Kingdom will uphold its responsibility to stop such a Bill,” said Mr Elmajerbi in a letter to the UN Security Council.
Lord Empey of the UUP who introduced the private members’ Bill and DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who has campaigned for several years to try to win some £1.5 billion (€1.71 billion) in compensation from the Libyan authorities for IRA victims, have acknowledged that Mr Elmajerbi appears to be correct.
Why other countries and not ours? Because of supposed Libyan cooperation in the “ war on terror” dating back to Gadaffi’s deal with Blair, who lifted oil sanctions in exchange. We are asked to believe this continues with the nominal government today. Gaddafi turned off the armaments tap to other countries but was unable in the end to deal with his own dissidents. The UK government hopes to use its influence to promote a stable Libyan regime after they played a major role in Gaddafi’s overthrow, then left myriad factions to fight it out after the short lived Arab Spring flared and died in 2001 -12.
As is the way with governments they never like to admit a choice is hopeless especially one they’ve made themselves. Libyan money is for Libyans unless a free and functioning Libyan government hands some of it over.
And that will take some time. Or never.
From a Wikipedia historical summary
The other source of IRA arms in the 1970s ( the first being the US) was the leader of the Libyan Arab Republic, Muammar Gaddafi, who was engaging in a strategy at this time of opposing United States interests in the Middle East by sponsoring paramilitary activity against it and its allies in Western Europe.[15]
The first Libyan arms shipment to the IRA took place in 1972–1973, following visits by Joe Cahill to Libya. In early 1973, the Government of the Republic of Ireland received intelligence that the vessel Claudia was carrying a consignment of weapons, and placed the ship under surveillance on 27 March. On 28 March, three Irish Navy patrol vessels intercepted the Claudia in Irish territorial waters near Helvick Head, County Waterford, seizing five tonnes of Libyan small arms and ammunition found on board. The weaponry seized included 250 Soviet-made small arms, 240 rifles, anti-tank mines and other explosives. Cahill himself was also found and arrested on board the vessel.[16][17] It is estimated that three other shipments of weaponry of a similar size and nature succeeded in getting through to the IRA in the same time period.[18] Journalist Ed Moloney reports that the early Libyan arms shipments provided the IRA with its first RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and that Gaddafi also gave three to five million U.S. dollars at this time to the organisation to finance its activities.[19] However contact with the Libyan government was broken off in 1976.
Contact with Libya was opened again in the aftermath of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which was said to have impressed Gadaffi. In the 1980s, the IRA received further larger quantities of weaponry and explosives from the Libyan Government, reportedly enough to equip least two professional infantry battalions.[20] Four shipments of guns, ammunition and explosives were made between 1985 and 1986, providing large quantities of modern weaponry to the IRA, including heavy machine guns, over 1,000 rifles, several hundred handguns, rocket-propelled grenades, flamethrowers, surface-to-air missiles, and Semtex explosive.[21][22][23] – an odourless explosive, invisible to X-ray, and many times more powerful than fertiliser.[24]From late 1986 to 2011, virtually every bomb constructed by the Provisional IRA, and splinter groups such as the Real IRA, contained Semtex from a Libyan shipment unloaded at an Irish pier in 1986.[24]
These shipments were partly in retaliation for the British Government’s support for the US Air Force’s (USAF) bombing attacks on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, which in turn were in retaliation for the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in Berlin. The USAF planes involved in the bombings had taken off from British bases on 14 April 1986, and Libya reportedly suffered 60 casualties in the attack. This second major Libyan contribution to the IRA came in 1986–1987.
There were four shipments which were not intercepted, in a huge intelligence failure of both Irish and British agencies….
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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