Britain To Back IRA Victims’ Lawsuit Against Libya

Britain’s sudden shift to support a lawsuit against Libya by Irish Republican Army victims raised hopes Monday that thousands maimed or bereaved by IRA bombs might one day receive compensation from the oil-rich nation.

Libya admits it shipped hundreds of tons of weaponry to the IRA in the mid-1980s, most critically the plastic explosive Semtex at the heart of the outlawed group’s biggest and deadliest bombs. Lawyers say they expect the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi to pay 10 million pounds ($16 million) to each member on their growing list of IRA victims.

“The fact is, if the Libyans hadn’t provided the IRA with the Semtex, my son would be alive today,” said peace activist Colin Parry, one of more than 150 litigants in the case first filed in U.S. courts in 2006 and currently in limbo. Parry’s 12-year-old son and a 3-year-old boy were killed when the IRA bombed a shopping district in Warrington, northwest England, in February 1993.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — who has endured scathing criticism since Scotland’s Aug. 20 release of the only person convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing — suffered renewed attacks Sunday, then reversed his government’s hands-off policy toward the lawsuit.

His office initially tried to defend itself by publishing Brown’s confidential 2008 letters to the victims’ lawyers. The letters argued that Britain could not legally negotiate on the matter and should do nothing to undermine better relations with Libya, a growing source of anti-terror intelligence tips as well as oil.

Opposition leaders and IRA victims denounced Brown as weak for failing to tie the Lockerbie prison release to a compensation deal. Within hours, Brown announced that his government would provide Foreign Office support for IRA victims as they seek face-to-face meetings in coming weeks with Libyan leaders.

Gadhafi’s son Saif said his government would permit access to Libyan courts — but would mount a stern defense.

“Anyone can knock on our door. You go to the court. They have their lawyers. We have our lawyers,” Saif Gadhafi said in a Sky News interview in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

When asked if his father’s government would reject compensation demands from IRA victims, Saif Gadhafi responded, “Of course.”

Libya has paid billions to other victims of Libyan-sponsored bloodshed as part of its successful push since 2001 to end its diplomatic isolation and reopen trade with the West.

Libya agreed in 2003 to pay more than $2.1 billion in compensation for the 270 people — among them 180 Americans and 52 Britons — killed in the December 1988 destruction of a civilian jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.

And in mid-2008, the Bush administration negotiated a deal that closed all lawsuits by U.S. citizens against Libya for state-sponsored terrorism. In October, Libya paid $1.5 billion into a joint fund to compensate any qualifying U.S. and Libyan citizens for violence including the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by U.S. soldiers; the 1989 downing of a French airliner over Niger that killed 170; and the U.S. air assault on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.

Crucially, that new fund also covers the cases of a handful of Americans wounded or killed in IRA attacks. Their receipt of out-of-court payments torpedoed the class-action lawsuit being pursued in the United States chiefly by residents of Northern Ireland and England, because the case required American plaintiffs to proceed on U.S. soil.

Jason McCue, the London lawyer leading the lawsuit-in-limbo, said Britain’s policy reversal “has given hope to thousands of ordinary people” and could spur Libya to reach an early out-of-court settlement.

McCue — who wrote to Brown last year asking him to negotiate directly with Libya on the matter — said he accepted now that Britain couldn’t do this because of earlier treaty agreements that reopened British-Libyan relations.

As part of those talks, Libya accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack, agreed to compensate its victims — and gave Britain documents detailing its arms shipments to the IRA from 1984 to 1986. Britain used that information to measure progress in disarming the IRA, a secretive plank of the Northern Ireland peace process completed in 2005.

McCue said Foreign Office support for the plaintiffs, whether in the form of funds, logistical aid or advice, could achieve the same result as direct British-Libyan negotiations.

The Foreign Office in London declined to detail any potential aid in advance of an expected visit by McCue, British lawmakers and IRA victims to Tripoli next month.

McCue said his London firm, H20, expects the Libyans to pay each of his more than 150 clients in the region of 10 million pounds ($16 million) for their own injuries or lost loved ones.

The lawyer said he expected thousands of additional claimants could come forward, given that the IRA killed more than 400 people, wounded thousands more and destroyed billions’ in property following the arrival of the Libyan arsenal.

The H20 case centers on 10 of the IRA’s biggest bombings from 1987 to 1996, the year before the underground group called a cease-fire. British explosives experts determined that all involved use of Libyan-supplied Semtex, which often was used as the fail-safe primer at the core of massive fertilizer-based bombs.

The first bombing was a November 1987 no-warning attack on a British war memorial service in the Northern Ireland town of Enniskillen that killed 11 Protestant civilians and wounded 63. The most recent was the IRA’s truck-bomb attack in June 1996 in the center of Manchester, northwest England, which wounded about 200 people.

Also Monday, Scotland’s administration denied reports that it relied upon Libyan-commissioned medical assessments when deciding to free convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill confirmed he received the assessments Aug. 18, two days before al-Megrahi’s release. But MacAskill said his decision was based solely on evidence from the Scottish Prison Service.

One of the three Libyan-hired doctors, cancer specialist Karol Sikora, rejected British media claims that they exaggerated their forecasts of al-Megrahi’s imminent death in line with Libyan orders. Britain’s laws on releasing a prisoner on compassionate grounds require a ruling that the inmate faces probable death within three months.

Sikora told Sky News that their Libyan clients did emphasize “it would be helpful” if the doctors could make their prognosis less than three months. “But it was our decision and we took into account a whole lot of factors,” he said.

And a Libyan newspaper published a column saying al-Megrahi received a celebratory homecoming “not because he was a freed convict … but because he is an innocent who was taken hostage.”

The front-page article by Rajab Abu Dabous, a university professor, in the state-run Green Marsh Newspaper said the release had saved British courts from an appeal that could have obliged the government to hand over all documents proving al-Megrahi’s innocence, possibly creating “a historical scandal.” By Khaleej Times Online.