Government must pay compensation to Gaddafi’s UK victims, demand MPs
BRITISH victims of IRA terrorists supplied with weapons by Col Muammar Gaddafi should be paid compensation by the Government for repeated failures to secure them a deal with Libya, a report by MPs is expected to conclude.
The select committee report, due out this week, is understood to demand that the next government set up a fund to help thousands of victims of the Troubles.
The Northern Ireland affairs committee report follows a Sunday Telegraph investigation highlighting the terrible treatment of British victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism.
While the families of murdered US citizens shared a £1billion fund, British victims have not received a penny.
It meant, for example, that American victims of the Harrods bombing in 1983 received millions of pounds in compensation from the Gaddafi regime, while British victims were frozen out.
It is understood that the MPs’ report will be critical of successive prime ministers and their governments.
It will also put the spotlight on Tony Blair over his close relationship with Gaddafi. Mr Blair visited Gaddafi six times between 2007, when he left office, and 2011, when the Libyan dictator was overthrown. The Sunday Telegraph obtained a 2008 email suggesting how Mr Blair had intervened on Gaddafi’s behalf in an agreement that led to American victims of IRA terrorism receiving millions of pounds from Libya.
British victims were cut out of the deal agreed between the US and Libya.
It is understood that MPs will demand urgent action, amid fears that time is running out for some victims and their families. MPs are expected to conclude the UK should set up a compensation fund immediately. They are expected to say that the Government should try to reclaim any money paid out from a future Libyan government.
Libya has vast supplies of oil and gas but is in the throes of civil war. Victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism have spoken of their dismay that £9.5 billion of frozen Libyan assets, held in the UK, have not been used for compensation.
Gaddafi supplied as much as 10 tonnes of Semtex, used in atrocities in Northern Ireland and on the mainland.
British lawyers began proceedings in the US to claim damages from the Libyan regime but the case was thrown out after a deal between George W Bush and Gaddafi. It is claimed that Mr Blair helped to broker that deal. Mr Blair has always insisted he had “nothing whatever to do with any compensation legislation signed by Mr Bush.
Jason McCue,of McCue & Partners, representing hundreds of UK victims, said: “The report can come to only one conclusion, as the evidence given to the inquiry that governments repeatedly failed these victims of terrorism was frankly damning.
“We hope the inquiry recommends in no uncertain terms that the Government must now take direct and robust action to ensure that the UK victims who were entitled to just compensation receive no less than fair treatment and the same reparations already paid by Libya to US nationals.”