The British Government are refusing to directly compensate victims of IRA Libyan supplied weapons and semtex explosives out of the former overthrown leader Muammaur Gaddafi’s funds frozen in British banks. They also refuse to publish a report they commissioned on the issue of compensation from ex-journalist and member of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross.The PSNI initially refused to confirm that Libyan supplied semtex was used in explosions after 1986 but a case brought by KRWLaw in Belfast on behalf of a number of victims has established the link to the AKM rifle used in the Kingsberry case.
The Irish Government and Gardaí were in no doubt that the Libyans were responsible for the vast stockpiles discovered by them in the ’80s and ’90s.
The issue of compensating victims of the conflict in Northern Ireland has been mired in an argument about definitions. In the case of Libya it’s also entangled with the long and murky history of the various intelligence services involvement in Libya and the fractured politics post-Qaddafi. A release of Government documents in the UK (December 2021) shows the British Government had doubts about the only witness against Abdelbaset al-Meghrahi who was convicted of the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988.
There are multiple cases being taken in an effort to gain compensation for victims and relatives killed and injured including the bereaved and injured of the Enniskillen bombing of 1987, and the murder of RUC woman Colleen McMurray, killed in 1991 when a mortor boosted by semtex was fired at the police car in which she was travelling in Newry. The victims of the 1996 docklands bombings in London have also been campaigning for recognition. Semtex was also used by so called ‘Dissidents’ to make the Banbridge bomb and following the Omagh bomb in 1998. Whether the post-Qaddafi state, weak and divided, should be expected to pay reparations may be moot but the interest now accruing to the British Government from Qaddafi funds in UK banks could in practice be used to compensate victims.
In Libya itself the Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba has reportedly reached a deal with the Chairman of Libya’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Libyan Investment Authority, Ali Mahmoud Hassan whereby Dabaiba will receive 1 billion dollars via the Central Bank of Libya for his cash strapped Government. The deal shows the central importance of the Libyan fund and its control by Hassan, a former Qaddafi ally.
According to the French based Africa Intelligence the L.I.A is sourcing the funds from CBL’s Bahraini subsidiary ABC Bank. Most of the LIA’s assets abroad, amounting to billions of dollars, have been frozen since sanctions were imposed on Qaddafi. It is these assets in British Banks that lawyers will try to source the money for a compensation fund. The Libyan Government itself has been without a budget since March – caught up in the internal politics of Libya and competing loyalties of politicians, some loyal to the leadership some to General Haftar the former Qaddafi era exile and ‘warlord’ are making their support conditional on appointing Haftar allies from the east of the country, to strategic positions. The Sovereign Fund is at the centre of allegations into the embezzlement of billions of dollars during the Qaddafi era. The Prime Minister himself has taken control of the Libyan Asset Recovery and Management Office [LARMO] in an effort to keep control of investigations into corruption in various state organisations.
[Africa Intelligence, 02/07/2021]
The present head of the LIA Ali Mahmoud Hassan was in control of some of the organisations in question during the Qaddafi era and he is also the focus of scrutiny by the international community including the US State Department, for the lack of transparency in the management of the Libyan Wealth Fund. It’s in this entangled atmosphere of competing interests and loyalties that the issue of compensation plays out.
The Libyan supplies arrive
Between 1985 and 1987 the IRA had succeeded in landing four huge shipments of weapons and explosives from Libya on the Co Wicklow coast. The last shipment, and what was to be the largest on board the ‘Eksund’ was captured by French customs in the Bay of Biscay on the 30th October 1987. It had reportedly been tracked by M16, a British Royal Navy submarine and crucially the French customs on the lookout for drug smugglers crossing the Mediterranean. The operation proved a major intelligence coup for the French and the resulting two-year investigation by the anti-terrorist Magistrate Judge Jean Louis Bruguiere produced prodigious amounts of intelligence about Libyan supplies to the IRA and the modus operandi of Libyan intelligence. Enough evidence accrued for Judge Bruguieres to seek the arrest of top Libyan intelligence agents.
Bruguiere’s investigation added to his reputation as an anti-terrorist specialist and he went on to investigate the explosion on board a French jet, UTA Flight 772, over Niger in September 1989, on a flight from Congo to Paris. Ultimately the Libyans agreed to pay 34 million dollars in compensation to the bereaved relatives of the flight who were scattered around the world. Again Bruguiere definitively pointed the finger at Libyan intelligence – accusing them of initiating the plot to bring a suitcase bomb onto the French jet.
The UTA bomb came a year after the explosion on board a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in December 1988 in which again Libya was implicated.
Lockerbie in particular ensured Libya’s pariah status and the passing of UN Resolution 731 condemning terrorism and expressing concern over the results of investigations implicating Libya.
The Qaddafi regime spent years dealing with international sanctions imposed after Libya failed to comply with the UN resolutions.The case still remains open after three decades as evidenced by recent arrests of Libyan intelligence officers.
In 2001 a Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was extradited from Libya to stand trial after years of sanctions put pressure on Qaddafi. Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 on 207 counts of murder but was released from prison early on compassionate grounds and died in Libya. His conviction was and is still surrounded by controversy as the most recent release of Government documents show.
Judge Bruguiere also investigated the attempted Loyalist arms deal between Ulster Resistance leader Noel Little and a South African diplomat, in a Paris hotel room in 1989.
The Eksund
In October 1987, after interception by customs and a failed attempt by an IRA man to scupper the ship the Eksund was taken to a French military docks in Brest where the cargo of weapons and explosives was unloaded and documented. Within days Eugene Crowley, Assistant Garda Commissioner and the Head of Special Branch Ned O’Dea, travelled to France to be briefed by Judge Bruguiere. The information gleaned from the interrogation of the crew particularly Captain Adrian Hopkins and the huge amount of documentation from the ships manifest detailing the massive 150 ton shipment gave Bruguiere and Irish intelligence specialists an unrivalled insight into the Libyan shipments.
Bruguiere was satisfied that he had established that one of the Heads of Libyan intelligence Nasser Al-Ashur had organised and helped the loading operation on Tripoli military docks. Ali Ashur had allegedly worked with Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy to organise the shipments.
Father Patrick Ryan, using his clerical mission as a front, helped to distribute the weapons around the country. Adrian Hopkins who had captained all four shipments was a charter-boat operator who needed the money. The IRA men on board included the Head of Engineering, Gabriel Cleary.
Crowley and O’Dea interviewed Hopkins in Paris and, according to political sources, persuaded him that only co-operation with the Gardaí could save him from a long stretch in the notorious La Santé high-security French prison in Montmartre. He was granted bail and made his way back to Ireland where he was then arrested, tried and sentenced to eight years in jail. Assistant Commissioner Crowley briefed the Minister for Justice Gerry Collins as well as Jack Hermon the RUC Chief Constable, about how Libyan intelligence officers had aided the massive re-arming of the IRA.
Frank Hegarty had been appointed IRA Quartermaster in Derry just as the Libyan shipments were due to arrive. The first shipment of about 10 tonnes of armaments was transferred from the Libyan ship “Samra Africa” off the Maltese coast onto the British flagged “Casa Mora” and landed in Co Wicklow in summer of 1985. Some of the haul was held in bunkers in Sligo and Roscommon and Donegal under Hegarty’s direction. Hegarty had earlier been recruited as British army intelligence/FRU informant. He was removed by his military handlers and relocated to the UK in January 1986 just before a huge bunker containing Libyan weaponry was discovered in Sligo and Roscommon.Months later Hegarty suffered homesickness, and returned home to Derry. Despite assurances given by Martin McGuinness, he was interrogated, allegedly by Freddie Scappaticci and shot dead in May 1986.
Willie Carlin, who had become an agent for Military Intelligence’s Force Research Unit in Derry, deals with the Hegarty affair in his book ‘Thatcher’s Spy’. Carlin maintained that a ‘safe house’ had been prepared for Hegarty’s extraction between November and December 1985, weeks earlier than it happened:
“Frank Hegarty’s time in the IRA was nearly up after the huge weapons haul from Libya was captured in Donegal (actually Sligo and Roscommon). It had been Frank’s task to safely store the weapons until they could be taken across the border for IRA operations. Strangely though these weapons were not officially ‘found’ until January 1986, which begs the question: why did Hegarty’s handlers prepare the ground for his exfiltration four to five months before the arsenal was ‘discovered’? The answer I suspect lies in high politics”. Carlin questions how Hegerty left the UK so easily and seems to suggest that FRU “colluded” in Hegartys ill fated return to Derry.
The intelligence gleaned from the Eksund triggered a huge search operation by the Gardaí called ‘Operation Juno’, a countrywide sweep conducted between 1990 and 1991. They now knew the extent of the four shipments that had already landed in Co Wicklow since 1986.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Tom Murphy flew into Split in Yugoslavia on May 28th,1989, allegedly to discuss more shipments with Nasser Ali Ashur, but decided to abandon the idea. Murphy’s compound on the border at Ballybinny was raided in June 1989 in connection with the murders the previous March of RUC officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan and a false passport was found with a stamp from Split in Yugoslavia dated May 1989. Musa Kusa – the head of Libyan intelligence – and Ali Ashur subsequently handed over the files about the shipments to the IRA in meetings with M16 in 1991 and ’92 according to the French publication Intelligence Online.
In January 1988 there was a find of Libyan-supplied matériel including five machine guns, 100 Kalashnikov rifles, 50 kg of semtex and 50,000 rounds of ammunition on Five Fingers Strand in Donegal.
This provided the Garda forensic officers and Army ordnance specialists a first opportunity to handle Semtex, the Czechoslovakian-manufactured, military-grade explosive. Further finds followed at Portmarnock in Dublin; Ballivor, Co Meath; and Patrickswell, Limerick.
It was now becoming more difficult to transport weapons along the IRA supply line running from Co Limerick to the border, with a branch off to Co Kerry. The logistics were tightly controlled by the Quartermaster General Michael McKevitt in Dundalk who had around 18 personnel operating to him. The Irish Government was in no doubt the Libyans were supplying the IRA.
Recently, after years of pressure from campaigning groups in the UK and Ireland, the British Government has moved to examine ways to aid victims. The overthrow and brutal death of Qaddafi in 2011 meant the end of attempts to obtain compensation from that regime. The present Libyan Government of National Unit is weak, the various factions disunited and desperate for funds. However there is around £11 billion in frozen Qaddafi-era funds in banks in the UK from which the British Government receives substantial interest payments.
After Qaddafi
The disastrous lack of preparation for the aftermath of the fall of the Qadaffi regime, by the UK and France in particular, left Libya divided between a powerless internationally recognised Government of National Accord; General Haftar a returned exile in the US, who has shifting tenuous control of the valuable oil fields; the so called Tobruk administration and various militias both Islamic and otherwise. Al Qaeda has a presence in the desert regions. Despite promises made by the Government of National Accord, the administration in Tripoli, it is questionable if they could implement any deal even if it was agreed. One source who was based in Libya until recently, says there is no public appetite in Libya to pay compensation for the overseas misadventures of the man the Libyans overthrew in 2011 and it would be a very tough sell for any politician. Actions in Northern Ireland are aimed at the British Government controlled funds in the UK.
In 2011 Solicitor Jason McCue, who represents victims of the post Ceasefire Docklands bombings of 1996 and who acted for the Omagh Bomb relatives in their compensation case, obtained a letter from the Transitional Government. It’s not clear what weight the letter carries.
Semtex fuelled explosions
The massive increase in lethal bombings fuelled with semtex created hundreds of victims who were killed or maimed after 1986. The first so-called ‘spectacular’, the explosion at the Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen in November 1987 which left eleven dead and others with horrific injuries, caused shock and revulsion. According to Irish Government documents Gerry Adams believed it was an IRA own goal. It also came at a time when Adams was building up Sinn Féin, the political wing of the movement and there were tentative moves towards talks.
Documents on Cryptome allegedly showing M16 agents involved in a plot to kill Gadhafi.
Lockerbie and Libyan intelligence.
Abdelasset Al-Megrahi never stopped claiming his innocence in relation to his role in the Lockerbie bombing but he dropped a final appeal to secure release on compassionate grounds. He died in Libya after release. His family were granted an appeal of his conviction which has been rejected by the Scottish High Court (January 15 2021).
In 2012 after the fall of the regime the Lord Advocate of Scotland Frank Mulholland travelled to Libya with FBI Head Robert Mueller to discuss the Lockerbie investigations with the Transitional National Government and submitted an International letter of Request for cooperation. The Scottish authorities recently identified Abu Mohammed Masud and Abdallagh al-Senoussi as suspects while Nasser Ali Ashour, one of the most senior Libyan intelligence officers in the old regime and the liaison with the IRA for decades, was named as the ‘mastermind’ of the Lockerbie bombing. Recently terrorism charges charges were formally announced against Masud who is suspected by the American authorities of making the bomb that brought down the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie. Masud is being held in Libya.
In September 2011, five months after Moussa Kusa the former Head of Intelligence defected, aided by MI6. The offices of the Libyan Intelligence apparatus were searched by Human Rights Watch in September 2011, leading to the discovery of thousands of intelligence documents. They revealed the extent of the relationship between Libyan Intelligence heads, the CIA and M16. Letters and telexs showed extensive links between MI6 head Sir Mark Allen and Moussa Kusa and others. They showed that by 2000 the British and American Intelligence services were cooperating with Koussa in capturing Libyan Islamic dissidents and rendering them to Libya for interrogation and torture. In June 1992 Intelligence Online carried a report that said ‘Nasser Ali Ashur is the key man in relations between Libyan intelligence services and the IRA. He participated in the recent secret negotiations between Libya and M15 that took place in Cairo and Alexandria in mid-August …and again during the first week of September. These talks are not however believed to have produced any concrete results. Ali Ashour was described as Head of Special Operations of Foreign Security (under the Jamahiriya Security Organisation)”.
George Bush ‘War on Terror’ led to a change of attitude to Qaddafi. There was now a common enemy – Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of them Libyan opposition to Qadaffi who facilitated their rendition to ‘black sites’ where they were interrogated by British and American intelligence operatives.
One of the Islamists M16 and the CIA captured with Libyan help was Abdel Kamik Belhadj, suspected of involvement in the Madrid bombings of ’94 and accused of being an ally of Al Queda. Captured in Bangkok in 2004 by the CIA he was held in a CIA ‘black site’ then flown back to Libya and jailed. He was later released after negotiations with Saif Ghaddafi and the Muslim brotherhood. He moved to Qatar and after the Libyan uprising he formed part of the Qaddafi opposition that took over Libya.
Belhadj subsequently got an unreserved apology from the UK Government for contributing to his mistreatment in a statement read out in parliament while he watched from the public gallery. He also got an out of court settlement. He has Irish links.
According to the UK Independent Newspaper ‘the material raises questions about the relationship between Moussa Kusa and the British Government and the turn of events following his defection. Mr Kusa’s surprising arrival in Britain led to calls for him to be questioned about his alleged involvement in murders abroad by the Libyan regime, including that of policeman Yvonne Fletcher and opponents of Qaddafi. He was also involved in the sending of arms to the IRA’.( The Independent, 3 September, 2011).
The IRA and Libya
The IRA’s relationship with Libya began in the early 1970s when Joe Cahill made contact with Qaddafi and set up what was to be the first major shipment from Tripoli docks.
Leslie Aspin, former soldier, grifter, drug and gun smuggler was pressed into service by M16 in the late 1960s. According to Aspin he used his British army special forces training to sell his skills to the Libyans and ran training camps in the desert training Palestinian ‘Black September’ members and IRA men. His book contains detailed drawings of the camps. Tom Murphy, South Armagh IRA ‘Chief’ is alleged to have trained in Libya in the early 1970s. Aspin claims to have supplied weapons and explosives to the IRA in Dublin and helped his Libyan Military Intelligence contact who he referred to as ‘The Colonel’ to load the Claudia in Tripoli 1973.The Claudia was seized in 1973 off Helvick Head in Waterford, probably betrayed not just by Aspin but by Sean Mac Stíophain, an enemy of Joe Cahill in the IRA.
By the very early 1980’s the regime was making diplomatic overtures and assuring European Governments that they condemned terrorists like the Baader Meinhof Gang and ETA, though Gadaffi occasionally made references to the IRA which worried the diplomatic Corps. Robert McDonagh, the Irish Ambassador to Rome who was also accredited to Libya sent a memo on a conversation he had with the British Ambassador in June 1981.
“The Ambassador made a brief reference to the IRA when I called on him. Certainly there had been some involvement in the past and it was known that IRA and UDA people had visited Tripoli. However he had failed to uncover any aid to the IRA in recent years although rumours of such aid and of IRA representatives being seen in Tripoli were persistent’..
Shortly after Qaddafi made a speech “We are against the Red Brigades. We consider them to be a terrorist group and we have never furnished military assistance to them or to the guerrillas of the IRA or Salvador. We are decidedly against terrorism”.
That all changed in April 1984 and the shooting of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London by a suspected Libya Intelligence officer. The killing of the police woman made Libya a ‘pariah state’. The shooting had been directed at an anti Qadhafi protest. The Libyans were required to close their ‘Peoples Bureau’ leading to fears that Ireland would now become a base for Libyan terrorism. Ireland exported thousands of live cattle to Libya every year and hundreds.of Libyan students came to study every year and so the Irish Government maintained uneasy ‘friendly’ relations. There have recently been arrests in connection with Yvonne Fletcher shooting.
State Department Cables on Libya
TheStory.ie investigative website obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the American State Department, a series of secret US State Department Cables on Libya from their embassy in Ireland, the UK and Paris in the 1980s. These deal with Ireland, the IRA and Libya. The FOI’s are available on the website and the trove includes secret cables sent from the Dublin American Embassy to the State Department in Washington.
In May 1984, after Constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead a confidential cable from the Embassy in Dublin to the Secretary of State in Washington copied to London and Belfast embassies was headed –
Libyan Irish Relations
The spectre of aid to the IRA
..Ireland’s Libyan community numbers 487 and it, plus the GOI, face several problems in terms of support since the closure of the London bureau. Of more concern to Dublin however is Colonel Qaddafi’s threat to resume aid to the IRA in retaliation for HMG’S close-down of the London bureau, The Irish have warned Tripoli that Dublin would view such aid with great alarm. Libyan authorities have assured Dublin that the British and not the Irish are the intended target.
The American bombing of Tripoli in retaliation for explosions attributed to Libya which killed American civilians and soldiers in 1985 was a trigger for increased aid to the IRA.
By the mid 1980s Libyan weapons were flowing to the IRA whose weapons stocks had been running low by the early ’80s, the American supply chain having been increasingly intercepted.
The Americans were paying close and concerned attention to developments in Ireland recognising the political dependence on trade with Libya of a depressed economy and cash strapped Government.
The American Embassy in Dublin telex to the State Department in April 1986 with worrying news:
‘In light of press accounts reported [by] REFTEL, we sought an update from our local sources on the evidence of a connection between the January 1986 Sligo arms find and Libya…DFA Secretary Donlon told DCM that some rifles from the find had been connected to Libya. And that the British statements on the PIRA/LIBYA connection has been approved by the GOI, although the wording in those must be strictly adhered to.
(TheStory.ie)
Tom Murphy allegedly appointed to the IRA’s GHQ in 1985 and the Libyan intelligence officer Nasser Ali Ashur were to arrange at least 4 shipments into Ireland from Libya. All were skippered by Adrian Hopkins and organised by Tom Murphy. The first shipment containing between 10 and 14 tons of weapons including semtex and light machine guns had been successfully landed on Clogga Strand, Wicklow in October 1985 from the Casamara. The French investigation led by Judge Louis Bruguiere after the capture of the Eksund in 1987, detailed the vast amount of matérial in the shipments as well as the logistics involved in their delivery about which he informed American diplomats:
Bruguiere’s investigation details the chronology and modalities of the Libyan arms shipments,Libya sent four shipments of arms to the IRA over a two year period before the French captured the Eksund. The first – about ten ton of armaments – took place in the summer of 1985 and involved the transfer off the Maltese coast of arms from the Libyan ship “Samra Africa” to the UK flagged “Casamara”. The second (October, 1985 – 12 tons)and third (July 1986 – 14 tons) delivered a similar procedure except the Casamara was rechristened the “Kula”. The fourth transfer (September 1986 – 80-100 tons) was made in Libyan rather than Maltese waters…to the Norwegian flagged “Sjamoer”. Finally “The Eksund” (October 1987 – 150 tons) was directly loaded in Tripoli’s Military Harbour prior to its ill-fated voyage.
By the time of the Exsund capture the IRA had more semtex then they could use, stashed in bunkers around Ireland controlled by Quartermaster Michael McKevitt. The Gardaí increasingly began to find the caches in remote locations but it was the seizure of the Eksund in October 1987 that really drew international attention to the IRA’s Libya connection. Bruguiere gradually revealed the ships manifest as detailed in the State Department Cables using information that came from the Judge following the seizure:
The ship’s cargo was approximately 150 tons of weapons, including SAM-7 Missiles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47Assault rifles, heavy machine guns, and large quantities of explosives and ammunition. A detailed inventory will be completed when all 2000 containers aboard the ship have been emptied.
The ship was taken to Brest, where the five crew members …They were subsequently transported to Paris on November 4 and put under the control of the Counterterrorism section of the State Prosecutor’s Office, which is pursuing the investigation.
The Minister for Justice Gerry Collins laid out the facts in the Dail in the following week explaining that –
“notification was given to the Garda from the French authorities that the cargo included 20 SAM 7 surface to air missile, approx 1,000 kalashnikovs, at least 600 Soviet FL grenades, approx 10 Soviet12.77mm machine guns with anti aircraft mounts, a quantity of anti tank recoilless rifles and ammunition, Beretta M12, 9mm Belgian machine guns, quantity unknown and approximately two tons of semtex explosives with detonators and fuses, a quantity of RPG 7 tubes and ammunition, mortars and 50 tons of ammunition. All the crew the Minister reported were Irish with two carrying passports stolen in 1984 from the Department of Foreign Affairs. The largest consignment of arms sent to Ireland was in French hands. They believed the consignment had been loaded on the 14th of October in Tripoli and was personally approved by Gadhafi”. By now the Gardai were in France being briefed by Bruguiere and interrogating the crew.
While the American State Department definitely claimed the ship’s cargo was from Libya they were in fact dependent on Bruguiere for information and he was wary of political interference.
A cable from the American embassy in Paris in January 1988 described attempts by diplomats to get further information from Bruguiere:
Poloff met on January 14th with Jean Louis Bruguiere, the Paris Magistrate handling the case of the Libyan arms shipment for the IRA, intercepted by the French last November,..Poloff again asked Bruguiere if an informal inspection of the seized weapons would be possible, the Magistrate responded that he had tried to arrange a visit, but a new complication has made it impossible for the present. The French Military arguing that the shipment includes volatile explosives and sensitive weapons such as SA-7 missiles, has obtained authorisation to store and oversee the weapons, the entire shipment now located in a restricted area of a French Naval arsenal warehouse in Brest contains sensitive French military supplies such as exocet missiles and even, he believed,equipment related to the French Nuclear arsenal. Bruguiere lamented (that) even he was having difficulty getting access to the shipment.
In November 1988 an American Diplomat was briefed by Judge Bruguiere on the progress of his investigation who telexed the State Department:
Bruguiere explained he had devoted most of his efforts to establishing who exactly in the Libyan Government was behind the shipment. He has identified a certain Nasir Mehdi Ashur (alias Naser) as the Chief culprit. Bruguiere claimed that he had ‘incontrovertible proof’ that Ashur was “intimately involved” in the operation. To the point of directing the loading of the arms onto the Eksund. Bruguiere said he plans to issue an international arrest warrant before the end of the year.
In April 1988 Tom King, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was pointing the finger firmly at Libya. The American Consul in Belfast telexed Washington –
..As evidence King presented the 1973 interception off the coast of Ireland of the ship Claudia carrying “250 rifles, 240 pistols, anti-tank mines and explosives, actually loaded on the ship by Libyan soldiers in Tripoli for their journey to their terrorist partners in the IRA”. King went on to describe the seizure in January 1986 of “the largest arms finds ever in Ireland included nearly 100 Libyan type Kalashnikov rifles and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition in boxes marked “Libyan armed forces”.
The American Embassy in Paris informed the State Department and the Embassies in Dublin and Valetta of some important news – that the French investigator was ready to issue “blue notices”:
French Investigating Magistrate Jean Louis Bruguiere is on the verge of issuing Interpol Blue (search) notices for Libyan Intelligence officials and IRA terrorists involved in Tripoli’s arms shipments to the IRA during 1985-1987. The biggest fish caught in Bruguieres net is Ali Ashur A high ranking Libyan Intelligence Operative who Bruguiere claims “masterminded and personally supervised” five arms shipments, ending in October 1987 when the French captured the “Eksund”, Bruguiere claimed that no one in the GOF knows how extensive and thorough his investigation is and that he is about to issue the warrants.He said that he knew his actions were “political dynamite” but that he was determined to press ahead at any cost. He asked that the US Government not comment on his investigations until Interpol actually issues the warrants.
Bruguiere explained that he has worked on the case for nearly two years and is convinced that he has a “judicial indictment” of the Qadhafi regime’s sponsorship of international terrorism. He felt that his dossier is extremely solid as it is based on “hard evidence” not vague intelligence reports. He showed us some of the voluminous material he has accumulated, including ships manifests listing known Libyan intelligence officials, an affidavit from the Captain of the Eksund identifying Nasser Ashur..as the Libyan who supervised the arms shipments, and other relevant documents
The State Department in Washington was informed that Judge Bruguiere was ready to issue Interpol “blue notices” for Nasser Ali Ashur and other Libyan intelligence operatives.
“who he claimed had masterminded the Libyan arms shipments to the IRA and that he had proven “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that Ashur had personally supervised the five deliveries. Ashur according to Bruguiere is a Colonel in Libyan Intelligence services who now resides in Tripoli. Bruguiere thought that Ashur might be the number three or four ranking intelligence operative.
Bruguiere said for the time being he can only diffuse blue notices…on the above individuals rather than international arrest warrants (red notices) this is because the crimes committed (illegal possession and shipment of arms) took place outside of France and involved no French citizens and were not directed at French targets. The GOF ( Government of France) can prosecute the crew of the “Eksund” itself as the ship blundered into French waters,…But this infraction of French law may be too tenuous to enable Bruguiere also to seek the arrest of those who facilitated the shipments from outside France…He added however that Malta or the UK would face no such legal impediment since some of the crimes took place in Maltese waters and all were directed against the UK
Interestingly Bruguiere was concerned that the French Governments political expediency might interfere with his investigation.
Bruguiere added that the full results of the investigations would not become public until the trial of the “Eksund” crew sometime next year. He told Poloff that no one – not the Quai D’Orsay,the DST (French Internal Security and Counter-Intelligence)or even the GOF terrorism prosecutors office – knew that he was about to issue the blue notices. Bruguiere asked that the information he provided Poloff be held “in the most absolute secrecy” until the GOF actually issues the notices..
Although Bruguiere has told the Embassy many times over the past year that he was “nearing the end” of the Eksund Investigation it does seem to have finally put together an impressive dossier…
…Given the current thaw in Franco/EC-Libyan relations, some in the GOF will not be pleased with the results of Bruguiere’s efforts. Nevertheless, the GOF cannot legally prevent him from issuing arrest or search warrants as long as they conform to certain norms, and Bruguiere’s research is of such high quality that there is little chance that technical flaws cab ue used to deep-six it.Curley#
Later in November 1989 the Embassy in Paris was able to inform the Secretary of State in Washington as well as embassies in Dublin, Valletta, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cairo that Judge Bruguiere had issued search warrants for Libyan Intelligence Agents and some IRA men.
1.Paris Press reports on 27 November that French Counter-terrism magistrate Jean Louis Buguiere has issued Interpol Blue (search warrants) for six Libyan citizens involved in arms deliveries to the Irish Republican Army during 1985-1987..
– Nasur Ashur, a senior member of the Libyan Intelligence Service considered to be the prime organiser of the Libya-IRA link
– Mustafa Omar Husani, Director of a Libyan-Maltese joint venture in Valletta
– Hussein Abuzeed, Mohammed Zeltina and Mohammed El-Amar Ramadan, Captains of the various boats that shipped the arms to the IRA.
2. French Judicial sources have told the press that Bruguiere did not issue Interpol (Red) notices for the six because the crimes were committed by foreigners …outside France and were not directed against France. Libyan, Maltese or Irish authorities could, however, issue red warrants if they so wished. Curley.
Bruguiere also issued “blue notices” on alleged IRA members for terrorist activities – Alan Downes, John Walsh, Denis Coyle and Arthur Loffey.
Bruguieres international search warrants for the 6 Libyans, including Nasser Ashur, were the result of Bruguieres unravelling the nexus running from Malta to Tripoli that for decades had been a crossroads for smuggling and gun running. None of the suspects were in fact arrested over the shipments. Bruguiere was right to be wary of political interference in his judicial inquiries into Libya and Qaddafi . The British Security Services were to spend the next two decades conspiring to overthrow Qaddafi while attempting to infiltrate or recruit members of the security apparatus and they were successful to an extent.
As mentioned earlier by 1992 the French publication Intelligence Newsletter specialising in intelligence matters carried an item on secret negotiations between Libya and M15. On the 10th of June 1992, according to I.N, Libyan and British officials were due to meet under the auspices of the United Nations in Geneva to allow Libya to hand over details of help it has given to the IRA. This was on foot of an offer from the Libyans in exchange for lifting the air embargo against Libya.[ I.N 10.6.1992]. There were further discussions in August of the following year in Cairo and Alexandria in mid-August and again during the first week of September. The Newsletter commented “these discussions have not however produced any concrete results”. No doubt the meetings were important ‘getting to know you ‘ sessions with at least one of the participants, Nasser Ali Ashur described as “the key man” in meetings between Libyan Intelligence Services and the IRA who was “controlling a network of agents installed mainly in Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Italy,Switzerland and Austria”. ( I.N 15.9.’93)
Investigations and compensation
As mentioned earlier Judge Jean Louis Bruguiere, after an 8 year investigation, achieved a massive compensation payment for French victims of the bombing in September 19, 1989 of a Union de Transport Aeriens flight 772 which left Brazzaville, Congo en route to Paris via Chad, with 156 passengers and 14 crew on board. The plane went down in the Tenere desert in Niger after the stopover in Chad, as a result of the explosion of a bomb placed in the luggage hold. Qadhafi finally paid the French Government 33 million dollars in compensation without accepting responsibility. Libyan intelligence were said by Bruguiere to be the instigators of the plot carried out by a Palestinian group.
Bruguieres investigation, conducted in close cooperation with the CIA and the FBI, concluded that the effective head of Libyan Intelligence Abdelsalam Senoussi , who was Gadhafi’s brother in law, instigated the plot to bomb the French aircraft in revenge for France’s aid to Chad then in dispute with Libya. While based in the Libyan embassy in Brazzaville, the charges said, he “was able to manipulate a member of the Congolese opposition to place on board UTA flight 772, a suitcase bomb set by a time ro detonate in flight” and that he had supplied the booby trapped suitcase to the Embassy in Brazzaville. Another member of Libyan Intelligence Abdelsalam Shibani, a Colonel in the Libyan army had “ purchased from a German manufacturer and had it customised in order to facilitate its use as a bomb”. Also the subject of International arrest warrants were Abdallagh Elazragh Head of the Embassy as well as intelligence officers Ibrahim Naeli and Arbus Musrah. In 1996 further arrest warrants were issued for Abdelsalam Hammouda, a Lieutenant Colonel and Head of Special Ops. The final charges against the Libyans were complicity to murder and murder. In 1999 a seven judge panel convicted the six Libyans and sentenced the Libyans in absentia. The Libyans paid over 33 million dollars in reparations and a victims advocacy group later received millions from a Qaddafi family charity.
UN resolutions 731 January 1992, and 883 passed in November 1993 imposed additional heavy sanctions on Libya to ensure compliance with an earlier resolution 731 which demanded that Libya submit the bombing suspects to the appropriate legal authorities and prove it had ceased support for international terrorism. France had already used the economic weapon of cutting its oil purchases from Libya. The screw was being turned on Qaddafi.
In September 1999, the Libyan State paid 33 million dollars rendered against individual defendants to the French Central Agency of the Treasury. [Under French law victims of criminal offences can take a civil action in the same court that heard the Criminal case]. It was at this point that Qadhafi handed over Megrahi and his co-accused for trial in Scotland over the Pan Am/Lockerbie bombing.
In January 2004, the Qadhafi foundation paid a French charity 170 million, an amount equivalent to 1 million per life lost in the UTA flight.
In August 2003 the Libyan Government accepted responsibility “for the actions of its officials” regarding the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. (Security Council letter 98/15/03). After Libya took further steps to comply with UN Resolutions the UN voted to remove sanctions. They were lifted permanently in September 2004. The Libyan Government paid over a total of 2.7m or 10 million dollars for each victim. [References to Judge Bruguieres report taken from Robert L. Pugh, et al V The Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, et al] .
When sanctions were lifted and during the so-called ‘War on terror” Libya, perceived as “opening up” was the subject of overtures by Tony Blair. As Ethan Chorin pointed out in his book’, Exit the Colonel’ (2012)
“Blair’s interest in Libya and Qaddafi dates back at least to his early days as Prime Minister. British intelligence played a key role in the Lockerbie deal and the lifting of UN sanctions in 1999; Blair made his first official visit to Tripoli in 2003 and spent the subsequent years heavily promoting Libya-UK commercial deals”. As Chorin pointed out Blair continued to have a keen interest in Libya and after retirement from politics made c6 visits to Libya for “commercial reasons”. Blair was at the time the EU’s Middle East “Peace Envoy”. He subsequently lobbied for JP Morgan in relation to possible business deals.
Blair’s actions looked questionable in the context of the subsequent Libyan revolution. The British and American rendition of members of the Islamist opposition resulted in torture in “Black sites” and were followed with rendition to Libya and further torture or execution. Islamist leader Belhadj, rendered from Bangkok, was one of the lucky ones who lived to receive compensation.
Muammaar Qadhafi was brutally killed on the 20th October 2011, after the battle of Sirte during the ‘Libyan Revolution’. The anti-Qadhafi rebels, including the formerly hunted ‘Islamicists’, were supported in the battlefield by French and British airpower. Qaddafi was replaced by a weak administration called The National Transitional Council. Many of those who played a key role in the fall of Qadaffi had been rendered or imprisoned by the CIA or M16 – men like Abdelhakim Belhadj and Sami Al Saadi. Now supported by NATO, Belhadj led one of the final assaults on a Qaddafi stronghold. Belhadj subsequently obtained compensation and a formal apology was issued in the House of Commons by the British Government by the then Prime Minister Teresa May.
The Faustian pact between the Qaddafi regime and the US and Britain though now at an end, had provided important information to the various intelligence services. Moussa Kusa, described by Chorin as “perhaps acting as a double agent” was believed to have supplied the CIA and M16 with valuable intelligence “including ( the names of ) black market suppliers, transporters and dealers in nuclear parts”. Some of those named were the members of the A. Q Khan network working through Malaysia and the UAE.(Ethan Chorin ‘Exit the Colonel’ 2012). Undoubtedly he also supplied details of his dealings with the IRA.
The British Government is itself benefiting from the interest on billions of pounds in frozen Libyan funds in UK banks to the tune of at least 5 million pounds a year. There is a compelling reason why these monies should be diverted to victims. Civil actions now appear to be the only way for victims to get compensation.
Meanwhile a fractured and impoverished Libyan polity attempts to achieve stability while billions of dollars of Qaddafi funds embezzled from the Libyan State lie in international banks frozen and the subject of multiple labrythine investigations. Libya is still in a state of instability after a disastrous ‘intervention’.
Ethan Corín Exit the Colonel, Public Affairs, New York (2012).
Exsund cables TheStory.ie (2015)
Africa Intelligence July 2021.
