Britain to back IRA victims' suit against Libya

updated 11:44 a.m. ET Sept. 7, 2009

DUBLIN - Britain's surprise decision to support a lawsuit against Libya by Irish Republican Army victims raised hopes Monday that thousands who were maimed or lost loved ones in IRA bombings might receive compensation payments one day 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 campaigner Colin Parry, one of more than 150 litigants in the case initially filed in U.S. courts in 2006 and currently in legal 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 suffered withering criticism over Scotland's Aug. 20 release and transfer home of the only Libyan convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, Britain's deadliest act of terrorism — has been accused by IRA victims of failing to demand compensation for their suffering as part of the deal.

Brown announced Sunday night that his government would provide Foreign Office support for IRA victims who are seeking face-to-face meetings next month with Libyan leaders as they pursue their lawsuit either in Britain or Libya.

The British leader previously had refused such aid, citing Britain's overriding need to keep improving relations with Libya, a source for anti-terror intelligence tips and a base for growing British oil interests.

Gadhafi's son responds
Gadhafi's son Saif responded that his government would permit the British lawsuit 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 already 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 it required American plaintiffs to proceed on U.S. soil.

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