Britain to back IRA victims’ lawsuit against Libya

DUBLIN — Britain’s sudden decision 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.

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 deadliest bombs. Lawyers say they expect the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi to pay 10 million pounds ($16 million) to each person 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.

The case was first filed in U.S. courts in 2006 but is 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 has endured scathing criticism since Scotland’s Aug. 20 release of the only person convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. He suffered renewed attacks Sunday, then reversed his government’s hands-off policy toward the lawsuit.

Opposition leaders and IRA victims denounced Brown as weak for failing to tie the Lockerbie prison release to a compensation deal. Within hours, the prime minister announced his government would provide Foreign Office support for IRA victims as they seek meetings 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.

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 — including 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.

That fund also covers a handful of Americans wounded or killed in IRA attacks. Their 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 needed American plaintiffs to proceed on U.S. soil.

Jason McCue, the London lawyer leading the lawsuit-in-limbo, said Britain’s policy reversal could spur Libya to reach an out-of-court settlement.

McCue said he accepted now that Britain couldn’t negotiate directly with Libya because of earlier 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.

McCue said he expected thousands more 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.

McCue’s 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 Libyan-supplied Semtex.

The first bombing was a November 1987 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 that it relied on 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.

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.”