UK Victims of IRA Attacks: Gaddafi-supplied Semtex and Weapons

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, HM Government support for UK victims of IRA attacks that used Gaddafi-supplied Semtex and weapons, Session 2016-17, HC 49 and the Government response, HC 331.

It is a pleasure to introduce the debate. If I may, I will start with the words of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In 1972, he announced on Libyan radio:

“We support the revolutionaries of Ireland, who oppose Britain and who are motivated by nationalism and religion…There are arms and there is support for the revolutionaries of Ireland…We have decided to create a problem for Britain and to drive a thorn in her side so as to make life difficult…She will pay dearly.”

Well, we did pay dearly; specifically, the victims of Gaddafi and of the IRA paid dearly, and continue to do so to this day. From the early 1970s to the 1990s, the Gaddafi regime provided many tonnes of arms and ammunition, millions of dollars of finance, lots of military training and bucketloads of explosives. A series of shipments in the mid-1980s delivered up to 10 tonnes of Semtex, an explosive synonymous with the bombings in Enniskillen, the Baltic Exchange, Warrington, the Docklands and elsewhere that we are all familiar with—all of us who saw them night after night throughout the troubles, on our television screens or more directly.

I was not a member of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs when evidence was taken, but it is very clear from reading the report that the most powerful witnesses were the victims. If I may, I will read out some of the accounts given in the report, because it is important to put our debates in this place, which are often rather academic, into a personal framework:

“Mrs Hamida Bashir, whose son was killed in the Docklands bombing in 1996, told us: ‘My words are sadly not sufficient to express the tremendous pain I feel as Inam was a lovely and kind boy’. Mrs Gemma Berezzag, whose husband was left blind, paralysed and brain-damaged in the same attack, told us: ‘My Zaoui is now very ill and getting…worse…but I will do my best to care for him as I love him and can’t imagine my life without him’. Mrs Berezzag passed away in 2016, having provided daily care for her husband for 20 years…Colin Parry, whose 12-year old son, Tim, died following the Warrington bombing in 1993, told us: ‘Describing the final moments of your child’s life is beyond words…because, as a parent, there is no greater pain or loss than the death of your child’.”

I do not think that it is possible to have taken evidence from those victims, or from others whom I have met in my current role, without being overwhelmed by their dignity, stoicism and patience. They are the politically inconvenient, the ignored, the sidelined. They deserve better.

The Committee had hoped that its report, published on 2 May, would encourage the next Government to adopt a fresh approach. What we got was this Government’s flat rejection of all 12 of our recommendations. To put it mildly, the Committee was disappointed.

Let me go through some of the background. In April 1984, PC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered outside the Libyan Embassy. Our diplomatic relations with Libya, which had always been strained, were—of course—severed. On 21 December 1988, PanAm flight 103 was blown up; it crashed into the town of Lockerbie and 270 people died. The Libyan convicted, one al-Megrahi, was jailed for life, released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds and welcomed as a hero in Tripoli. He died three years later.

After sponsoring 25 years of mayhem in the UK and elsewhere, by 1995 Libya was said to have started coming in from the cold: it confessed to the scale of support that it had been giving to republican terrorism, and it appeared to have stopped giving assistance to the IRA. That led to Sinn Féin-IRA realising that the game was up, and thus to the negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday agreement of 1998. Mr Blair restarted diplomatic relations with Libya in 1999, and compensation was paid to the relatives of Yvonne Fletcher and the victims of PanAm flight 103.

There followed something of a love-in between Gaddafi and Tony Blair. Mr Blair said of the man responsible for wholesale murder and butchery in the UK:

“He’s very easy to deal with. To be fair to him, there’s nothing that I’ve ever agreed with him should be done that hasn’t happened.”

No doubt he was as pleased as Punch that Shell signed an agreement at around that time for half a billion dollars-worth of gas exploration rights and that BP resumed its investment in the region. That was great for business, but it did nothing for Gaddafi’s victims. I am left wondering whether those are the British values that Tony Blair was so pleased to espouse. Well, they are not my values, and I hazard a guess that they are not the values of right hon. and hon. Members gathered in the Chamber, either. It is clear from the evidence given that the then Government missed a vital opportunity to act on behalf of IRA victims at a time when Libya was seeking a rapprochement with the west.

Of course, the UK was not the only country with Gaddafi victims among its citizens—and this is where the UK Government’s position starts to look especially shameful. The US was much more proactive, amending legislation to allow access to the frozen assets of terroristic countries and of the companies that were doing business with them. Libya then settled, but President Bush deleted the UK co-litigants from the deal. Evidence heard by the Committee suggests that the Government of Gordon Brown decided to get involved at a very late stage and that any pressure on Washington was purely tokenistic. That approach continues under the current Administration, I am sorry to say: in a letter of 20 November, the Foreign Secretary ruled out even the threat or intimation of accessing or continuing to freeze terrorist funds. That stands in stark contrast to the United States’ policy.

In 2004, Libya agreed to pay compensation to the French Government for the 170 people killed in the bombing of UTA flight 772 in 1989. The previous year, the French Government had done what the UK Government would not and still will not do: they threatened to use France’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to block the lifting of sanctions in order to extract rightful compensation. The Foreign Secretary’s letter of 20 November makes it plain that the UK still will not use its influence in the way that the French Government, with their more muscular approach, have done to good effect.

The German Government secured $35 million in compensation for the German victims and families of those killed in the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin. It was clear to the Committee that the UK Government did not pursue compensation for UK victims with anything like the determination and vigour of the Governments of France, Germany and the US, and UK victims are entitled to ask why not.

In the early years of the coalition Government, post-Gaddafi, it seemed from the Committee’s analysis that a more robust approach was being taken. David Cameron was quite upbeat about it in his first days and weeks in office. He said:

“We need to be clear that this will be an important bilateral issue between Britain and the new Libyan authorities. Clearly we have to let this Government get their feet under the desk, but this is very high up my list of items.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 33.]

However, nothing transpired. No leverage was placed on de facto Governments. I visited Tripoli three times as a Defence Minister between 2012 and 2014. If victims featured at all, they were in the margins. I very much regret that and am sorry about it. Why have consecutive UK Governments taken such a laissez-faire approach to victims, in stark contrast with the US, France and Germany?

In the previous Parliament, Lord Empey’s private Member’s Bill placed a statutory duty on the UK Government to take every step they could to prevent asset release until a compensation package from Libya was agreed. That most reasonable and moderate Bill was passed by the House of Lords, but there was not enough time for it to be considered in the Commons before the end of the Session. Lord Empey’s Bill would not have challenged EU or UN strictures on seizing assets, but would have been a sign of Government intent to lever justice for victims. I commend it to the Minister and seek his advice on its further progress.

My Committee’s report put various points to the Minister. He is a good man and I know he did his very best to answer them fairly, frankly and openly. However, we are left wanting more. We need to know why the Government consider claims for compensation to victims to be a purely private matter when the US, France and Germany actively espouse the causes of their citizens. In the Minister’s view, will Libya ever offer financial compensation or are we simply kicking the can down the road? Although it is not an option I personally favour, why precisely is a UK reparations fund to give financial compensation to victims not a viable option in place of extracting reparations from Libya, a course of action the Government seem reluctant to take? What exactly will the Government do to be

“more visibly proactive on this file in the future”,

as stated in the Minister’s recent letter to the Select Committee?

The Committee that I chair is completely resolved that we will move on this matter and that justice will be done for victims. We will call the Foreign Secretary before the Committee on a regular basis to explain what progress has been made. Although our sessions are always cordial, he cannot necessarily be assured of an easy ride until this is resolved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

Of course, in the particular case of the Lockerbie victims, the UK Government intervened directly to secure compensation. However, as we have discussed, individual compensation is being pursued through private claims, and we have sought to facilitate that work through our contacts and everything we have done in relation to that. We still believe that that is the most appropriate thing to do, and that is why we deal directly with the Libyan authorities. We have approached individual compensation differently. The allocation of the compensation fund illustrates the difficulty of individual compensation, but of course if such claims are successful, that deals with that issue. However, as successive Governments have done, we have supported the individual pursuit of claims rather than doing on it on a Government basis. That is different from those who have chosen to do it another way—that is quite right. That is the process we have chosen, and that is the process we are continuing to support.

[Dr Murrison]

I am following what the Minister has to say closely. He is making a convincing argument, but the central fact remains that our closest allies—the US, France and Germany—have secured substantial reparations from the country responsible for those acts. The legal entity, notwithstanding the Minister’s remarks about Gaddafi, is Libya. We have failed to do that, and it is about time that our victims got a better deal. I am sure the Minister agrees with that. The only debate is about how we are going to achieve it. How we dish the money out is a second-order issue. It is important that we get the money in the first place.

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are continuing to pursue that process by working with the existing Libyan Government and the future Libyan Government to secure that support. That is why a meeting with the Libyan Minister for Justice has been suggested. That is why the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister raised this issue, and why I shall raise it.

Hon. Members and victims have understandably asked us to demonstrate even more effort to secure compensation than we have already put in. The ultimate aim is to ensure the Libyan Government is able to respond to the understandable request for compensation for the victims of Gaddafi. That is the position we want to reach. The UK Government, like all of us, are determined to make sure that happens. That is the process we are pursuing.

There are a couple of other things to say. I want to deal with the issue of frozen assets and sanctions. There is no lawful basis on which the UK could seize or change the ownership of any Libyan assets. The UN Security Council resolution under which those assets were frozen, which the UK supported, is clear that they should eventually be returned for the benefit of the Libyan people. To breach that resolution would be a violation of international law. We set that out in our response to the Committee, and that position has not changed.

A veto is an individual response that the United Kingdom could produce, but it would then be used to stop the return of assets. As the Government rightly said, we get no sense from other states that they would support that. Of course, they do not have to do anything—it is our veto—but they would not necessarily understand our vetoing a policy that is designed to return moneys to those who would then be in a position to compensate the United Kingdom and the victims the United Kingdom is pursuing that for. To apply a veto may not be the most appropriate thing. The point that the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and others made is that it is a form of pressure on Libya, which must be correct. We must find other ways of putting pressure on the Libyans so that when they are in a position to respond, they understand that they need to make that response. Our contact with the Libyan Government makes it clear to us that they understand that need, but the money is not there at the moment because it is just not there. We must continue to pursue that.

On the sanctions, when the European sanctions rules are changed, we will have to see whether that provides an extra opportunity. I was interested by what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said, and that will form part of a further discussion in the future. I noted what she said about pensions. As far as I am aware, that is something new, but we may come back to it in due course.

That is what we are doing in the immediate future, and as far as the future is concerned we will pursue a twin-track approach. We will continue to help victims engage directly with the Libyan Government, as appropriate, to help them pursue their campaign. That is the policy we have followed. As I said, I have previously informed victims that we are exploring the possibility of a meeting for them with the Libyan Minister of Justice. Our embassy in Tripoli has raised this with the Minister several times, and he has agreed in principle to the proposal. I recently wrote to him to welcome that, and to stress our desire to press ahead with arrangements. Such a meeting would demonstrate the Libyan Government’s genuine desire to address the legacy of the Gaddafi regime. In addition, we will explore with the Libyan authorities the possibility of establishing a communal fund for victims, although I should be honest with hon. Members that the current political and economic crisis in Libya means that progress on that is likely to be slow, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said.

There are complex questions at stake with regard to compensation, such as which groups of victims would be eligible, and what type of compensation and support would be right. We discussed that during the course of the debate. Discussions about what a fund would look like are still at an early stage, but we anticipate that it would focus on community support, rehabilitation and reconciliation, and as I said earlier would be accessible to all victims throughout the United Kingdom. I welcome the recent engagement of Democratic Unionist party colleagues on this issue, and I look forward to further constructive discussions in the future. We recognise victims’ frustration at the slow rate of progress. I fully appreciate that although that is an easy sentence for a Minister to say, it cannot in any way cover the pain and suffering that people have been through, but the political, economic and security realities in Libya are making progress on the issue extremely difficult.

The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I have all made clear the Government’s support for change in Libya and for the UN process being led by Ghassan Salamé. We are actively engaged in that because the sooner the process can be successful and the sooner Libya has stabilisation and a new Government, the easier it will be to press such matters still further.

I repeat the Government’s sincere commitment to help the victims of Gaddafi-sponsored IRA terrorism make progress. I express my gratitude for the positive way in which colleagues from across the House have engaged with the Government on this issue and my sincere desire for that to continue. I recognise that the slow process is deeply frustrating to all those who represent the victims, as well as to those victims themselves, many of whom have campaigned tirelessly for many years to achieve justice. Today’s debate and the determination of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire and other hon. Members in the Chamber make an impression. Clearly, this is an issue on which the Government are committed, but the determination and the desire of the House is plainly that we have to do more, to be seen to do more and to explore further ways in which we can redress the balance.

I am grateful as always for the kindness with which colleagues treat me, and hope that I can play my part in resolving the issue. I take that to heart.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

I will be as brief as possible, Mr Gapes.

Libya is potentially an extremely wealthy country. It has governance issues, to put it mildly, with which the United Kingdom is assisting. Governance falls into this piece nicely, since compensation for victims is certainly a governance thing. I hope very much that, as we continue to put considerable resource into Libya, we will remind our interlocutors at every available opportunity that they have duties to us as well. I am pleased to hear from the Minister that he is renewing his commitment to getting for victims the justice that they deserve.

I am also pleased that the Minister acknowledged, I think, that the legal entity in this debate is Libya. I fully appreciate that the Libyan people, broadly defined, are not responsible for the actions that we associate with Gaddafi; nevertheless it is Libya to which we have to look for retribution in this particular case. It seems to me odd, if we are improving the governance of a country, as we are in Libya, that we do not make that very apparent to the Libyans. Clearly we need to do so.

I very much hope that the Minister takes note of the noble Lord Empey’s private Member’s Bill. It seems to me to have merit, and there may be a way of advancing the issue so as not to conflict with European Union law as long as that applies in the United Kingdom, or more particularly, with United Nations rules, which will continue to apply to the United Kingdom.

The Minister will have read paragraph 61 of the report that we are debating and will have noted that on a significant number of occasions, frozen assets have been accessed, notably President Marcos’s Swiss bank account in the interests of rectifying human rights abuses in the Philippines, the assets of Colombian paramilitaries and, most relevantly, frozen assets in the US in respect of Saddam Hussein’s victims and the victims of Iranian and Cuban terrorism. There is precedent; it is clearly not impossible to access those sums, and it is certainly not impossible to threaten to access those sums.

My concern and perhaps that of the members of my Committee is that the Government at the least give the impression that this subject is not a top priority for them. I will accept the reassurances of the Minister and I note that in his comments in response to the report he agreed that there needs to be a better perception of Government’s efforts—but there also need to be better efforts underpinning that perception.

I hope very much that in the months ahead we will redouble our efforts when dealing with our Libyan interlocutors to impress on them how important this matter is to the British people. It is just not acceptable to wait, as happens at the moment, for victims to age and pass on, as too many have, without getting the justice that is their due. British values have to do with justice. They are about getting what is right for victims. Clearly, the victims of Gaddafi-sponsored IRA terrorism have not had justice, and I look to the Minister to ensure that they do. I look forward to him or the Foreign Secretary appearing, in the not-too-distant future, before my Select Committee to report on progress.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, HM Government support for UK victims of IRA attacks that used Gaddafi-supplied Semtex and weapons, Session 2016-17, HC 49, and the Government response, HC 331.