Blair to face MPs over blocked compensation for IRA victims
TONY Blair faces a grilling by MPs over claims he helped prevent IRA victims getting compensation from Libya.
The former prime minister is accused of encouraging President George W Bush to scrap all terror-related legal action against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in the US courts in 2008 in an effort to protect trade deals.
The Libyan tyrant gave tons of Semtex explosives to the Provisional IRA for use in its bombing campaign during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
But the controversial deal meant UK victims, who brought civil proceedings in the US courts against Libya, had their compensation claims blocked.
In a letter last month to the Commons’ Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC), which is examining the Government’s role in supporting victims of IRA attacks at the hands of Libyan-supplied weapons, Mr Blair strongly denied trying to block the compensation claims.
He said: ‘The attempt to implicate me in deliberately trying to stop IRA victims receiving compensation is utterly without foundation and wrong.’ But now the exLabour leader has been asked by the committee to give evidence in person.
In a letter to him yesterday, committee chairman Laurence Robertson said there were ‘questions we would like to explore with you in some depth’ about the issue.
The US negotiated a significant financial package for victims of the Lockerbie bombing and those killed in a Berlin disco bombing blamed on Libyan agents.
In his written evidence to the NIAC, Mr Blair said he understood ‘why victims of IRA terrorism should have wanted their claims raised at the same time as the settlement of the Lockerbie compensation in 2008’. But, he said, ‘for the Americans this was never going to be part of any settlement since they were focused on US citizens affected by Lockerbie and the Berlin discotheque bombing’.
Mr Blair said he ‘never tried to get the Americans to exclude the claims of IRA victims’, adding that he ‘did not raise the issue with President Bush’.
Democratic Unionist Party MP Gavin Robinson urged Mr Blair to accept the invitation. ‘As a result of Libyan sponsored terrorism against US citizens, Gaddafi’s administration agreed in 2008 to pay $1.5bn (£1.03bn) to compensate families affected.’ He added: ‘For IRA victims in the United Kingdom, however, it would appear that our government made no effort whatsoever to pursue compensation.’