Victims of IRA bombings seek payouts over Libyan Semtex
‘Immensely concerned’
VICTIMS of Libyan-sponsored IRA attacks have compiled a dossier on the case for compensation after the British government refused to publish its own report into the issue.
Those injured and bereaved by weapons supplied by former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi expressed outrage last month when the Foreign Office in Britain said the report it commissioned would remain confidential.
The late Colonel Gaddafi armed the IRA with the Semtex plastic explosive used in Troubles bombings such as those targeting Harrods in 1983, the Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen in 1987, Warrington in 1993 and London’s Docklands in 1996.
In response to the withholding of the report, one victims’ group – the Docklands Victims Association (DVA) – has published a document outlining findings and recommendations based on its 15-year campaign for compensation. It has sent copies to British prime minister Boris Johnson, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill.
During its campaign, the group has met with Libyan officials, and a range of ministers and officials from the UK government and Stormont. In 2008, DVA president Jonathan Ganesh pressed the case for compensation in a meeting with then British prime minister Gordon Brown.
Mr Ganesh, who was badly injured in the Docklands bombing, also met William Shawcross, author of the Foreign Office-commissioned report, during his inquiries in 2020. He said victims were ‘immensely concerned’ the Shawcross report had been classified. Mr Ganesh also branded the UK government’s approach to the compensation campaign ‘absurd and disingenuous’.
He said: ‘We have now, due to the absence of the promised Shawcross report, been forced to issue our own report based on the DVA work over the past many years to secure compensation.
Mr Ganesh is scheduled to give evidence to Westminster’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on the DVA report.
Victims want the current Libyan authorities to pay compensation, but, given the unlikelihood of that happening in the short term, they have urged the British government to instead use the billions of pounds of assets linked to the toppled Gaddafi regime which were frozen in the UK in 2011 under UN sanctions. The British government has ruled out using the £12billion (€13.8billion) of frozen Libyan assets, or the tax take generated by them, to compensate victims.
It has also refused to fund a scheme using other public finances while it continues to press the authorities in the north African country to pay out. The UK Foreign Office has insisted the responsibility for paying victims rests with the Libyan state.
Campaigners have highlighted that the US, France and Germany secured millions in compensation for Libyan terror victims from Gaddafi’s regime as it emerged from years of international isolation in the 2000s.
Explaining why the report would not be made public, last month British Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said Mr Shawcross’s work had always been envisaged as an ‘internal scoping’ exercise.