MPs urge compensation for IRA victims over Libyan Semtex

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Credit: PA

The next UK government should compensate victims of IRA attacks which used Libyan explosives, a committee of MPs has said.

Bombings using toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s weapons included the 1987 attack on a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh; an attack on Harrods department store in London in 1983; the 1993 Warrington bomb, and the 1996 bombing in London’s Docklands.

Victims of such Semtex attacks are pressing for compensation from massive amounts of frozen assets seized from the Gaddafi administration by the UK.

Now, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has accused former Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party of missing a vital opportunity to secure payouts in the early 2000s, compounded by further omissions by successors – amounting to “two decades of failure”.

Chairman Laurence Robertson said: “The UK Government cannot allow this litany of missed chances to continue.

“There needs to be direct dialogue with the Libyan Government, and if the situation there makes this impossible, the Government must begin the process of establishing a fund themselves.”

Starting work on compensation now would allow the Government to calculate who is eligible and how much money it should claim back from the Libyan authorities, after their predecessors armed the Provisionals with massive amounts of weaponry - extending the Troubles and causing enormous human suffering.

Tuesday's report from MPs also found:

  • Almost £9.5bn of frozen assets in the UK from the Gaddafi regime could provide “leverage” in negotiations on a compensation deal

  • The UK Government has left it to victims to secure compensation for fostering terror in stark contrast to other countries

  • The administration led by Mr Blair missed a vital opportunity, during the period in which Libya was seeking a rapprochement with the west from 2003, to act on behalf of IRA victims by placing this issue firmly on the negotiating table to secure a compensation package

  • The exclusion of the UK victims of Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism from the terms of the US-Libya Claims Settlement Agreement 2008 after Mr Blair left office was another missed opportunity to resolve the issue of compensation, given the determination and vigour demonstrated by the governments of France, Germany and the US

  • If the Coalition Government had taken up the issue after the 2011 fall of Gaddafi, it would have had a good chance of an agreement

The report concluded: “We believe that, with sufficient determination, the UK Government should be able to reach an agreement.

“But, as one of our witnesses said: ‘It requires somebody to bang on their door, not with a wet sponge, but (with a) bang’.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The Government supports UK victims of Gaddafi-sponsored IRA terrorism in their attempts to seek redress from the Libyan authorities.

“The next government will respond to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee's report in due course.”