Libya has a bloody history of terrorism and remains a breeding ground for violence

LIBYA has been implicated in some of the most infamous terrorist atrocities of recent decades, including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the suicide attack on the Manchester Arena three years ago.

Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Tripoli in 1984 after the Metropolitan Police officer, Yvonne Fletcher, was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in London during antigaddafi protests.

The 25-year-old was caught in a volley of gunfire as she policed a demonstration in St James’s Square, but all attempts to bring her killer to justice have failed.

In April 1986, three people were killed and more than 200 injured when a bomb went off in a Berlin disco, popular with US service personnel.

The attack led to the US Government denouncing Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism, and President Ronald Regan ordered retaliatory air strikes on Tripoli, in which Col Gaddafi’s home was hit and his adopted daughter killed. In 1988, just four days before Christmas, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit via Heathrow exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killing all 243 on board and 11 people on the ground.

The flight was on the next leg of the flight, to New York’s John F Kennedy airport, when a bomb loaded into the luggage hold, detonated.

Of those who died, 190 were Americans and 43 were British. The atrocity led to the biggest criminal investigation ever undertaken in the UK.

In 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed almegrahi, the former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and an alleged intelligence officer was found guilty of the bombing.

The special Scottish court, which was sitting in the Netherlands, sentenced al-megrahi to life imprisonment for the atrocity. But in 2009 he was freed on compassionate grounds following his diagnosis of terminal cancer.

He had been given just weeks to live, but survived for another three years, dying in May 2012, aged 60. The Arab

Spring in 2011, which led to the downfall and assassination of Gaddafi ushered in a power vacuum in which terrorist groups flourished.

In 2014 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) was established in Libya and based itself in the city of Sirte.

Isil recruited heavily among heading for Europe from countries such as Chad, Mali and Sudan.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Al-qaeda affiliated organisation, also flourished after the uprising against Gaddafi.

The organisation, which was outlawed by the British Government in 2005, attracted a number of Libyan expats, including many from Britain who wanted to see the dictator overthrown.

But both organisations served as useful terrorist training schools for foreign fighters, who subsequently returned to Europe.

Libya was also regarded as one of the main routes for illegal migrants heading to Europe, with thousands making the crossing to Italy and then beyond.

But with a vicious civil war raging and no recognised legitimate Government in place, Libya was regarded as a “failed state”, making deportation there a legal impossibility.

In 2017 Salman Abedi, the British born son of a Libyan refugee, blew himself up during a concert at the Manchester Arena, killing 22 innocent people and injuring hundreds of others.

Abedi and his younger brother, Hashem, who helped build the bomb, had both spent time in Libya as teenagers, where they were introduced to members of the LIFG.

In March this year Hashem, who was successfully extradited back to the UK from Tripoli, was convicted of 22 counts of murder in respect of his brother’s suicide attack. He is yet to be sentenced for the atrocity.