Remember, Colonel Gadaffi`s Libya was responsible for blowing up Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland and also a a French flight to Paris from Brazzaville, in central Africa, was blown out of the sky over Niger. All 170 passengers and crew on the French UTA plane died. A total of 440 deaths in two air disastersplus various other terrorist attacks.

Drugs, guns and Semtex: any deal will do
http://www.sundayherald.com/17805

The arrest of three IRA agents in Colombia should come as no surprise. They have always been determined to establish an international network of terrorism. Neil Mackay reports

THE IRA looks at terrorism the way McDonald's look at burgers. The whole world is a market place and nowhere is beyond their reach. The provos have been touting for support and jumping into bed with madmen, gunmen and godfathers for as long as they have been in existence. America might be amazed that Sinn Fein and the IRA could have snuggled up to the drug-dealing FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) , but anyone who has ever lifted a book on Irish history shouldn't be surprised.

In 1916, the forerunners of the IRA were sucking up to the Kaiser and getting guns from the Germans while most of Ireland's youth were getting blown to hell in The Somme. And during the second world war, while De Valera allowed swastikas to fly over Dublin, the IRA was helping the Nazis with bombing raids on Britain.

In those days the catchphrase was ''England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity'; today it's really a case of ''any opportunity will do''. For the provo leadership the ends justify the means, even if that involves glad-handing with men like Gadaffi or even Saddam Hussein. So should a little jungle drug-dealing really be considered out of kilter ?

Here's what we know about the IRA's Colombian adventure. About six weeks ago, three republicans -- Martin McCauley, James Monaghan and Niall Connolly -- slipped into Bogota on false papers, pretending to be journalists. They jumped a plane to territory held by FARC and took up the posts of visiting professors of bomb-making at a jungle training camp.

The Irish guest lecturers were found covered in traces of explosives and cocaine when they were arrested last week by Colombian security forces at Bogota airport. It's thought that the provos were teaching the peasant FARC how to launch urban bomb attacks and in exchange were fixing up a lucrative drug and weapons connection.

The boys' CVs make interesting reading. Monaghan is a convicted bomber and the suspected head of IRA engineering (aka its chief bombmaker) as well as a member, allegedly, of the IRA's ruling army council. In 1989, he was filmed sharing a platform with Gerry Adams at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (annual conference). McCauley was shot by an undercover RUC team, along with his friend Michael Tighe who died in the incident, and Connolly, a Trinity college graduate, has been named -- much to the horror of Gerry Adams -- as Sinn Fein's man in Havana. He was their Latin American fixer, said Aymee Hernandez, a spokesperson for Fidel Castro.

But then, the provos have been keen to establish an international network of contacts since they split with the official IRA in the early 1970s. They quickly made their first overseas contacts with Yasser Arafat's PLO, then based in the Lebanon. In those heady days of international struggle and leftist brotherhood, the PLO supplied training in arms and tactics for young provos still wet behind the ears.

They also gained supplies of weapons from Palestinian terrorists acting as go-betweens for Soviets, who happily exploited a bloody little organisation like the IRA to irritate and destabilise its cold war enemy, the UK.

Now trained and armed, the IRA began to think of itself as leaders in that elite club of global freedom fighters. With that in mind, they began to patronise groups like ETA -- the Basque separatists' terror group -- and strange Marxist gangs like the Italian Red Brigades and the nasty Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany. They even entertained members of these organisations at safe houses in Dublin, Derry and Belfast.

Life among the Marxist revolutionaries didn't last long, however. Groups like the Baader-Meinhof, which attracted spoiled rich kids who couldn't shoot straight, were soon put out of commission by police. Then the real big boys like the PLO became disenchanted with the provos. They quickly worked out that the IRA wasn't really all that revolutionary and was actually just a bunch of Armagh boys who wanted a Catholic Ireland rather than a utopian workers' republic.

But like their fathers and grandfathers before them, the modern day provos were always ones with an eye to the main chance. By the 1980s, Colonel Gadaffi was well on his way to becoming every itinerant terrorist's friendly uncle, and he was particularly fond of indulging those with a grudge against the UK or the US. Libya became the principal source of arms, providing around four tonnes of Semtex -- thanks to a nice Libyan-Czech connection -- as well as missiles, rocket launchers, 1000 assault rifles, handguns and a truckload of ammo.

Training was also laid on and Gadaffi's guns still make up the bulk of the IRA's mountainous arsenal. By now, the British had moles in just about every level of the provos and they began intercepting arms shipments, such as the Eksund in 1987. It all got a bit embarrassing -- even for the Colonel -- so the connection was shut down.

Thanks to the march of history, however, the Soviet Union was just about ready to fall apart and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact opened up new avenues for gun running -- and drugs. As former Soviet bloc army officers and KGB men turned to gun-running, and the East fell to the nascent Red Mafia, the IRA jumped in quick.

Anarchy in the Balkans was also looked on favourably by a shrewd IRA army council. Last year the Sunday Herald revealed how the Real IRA's biggest gun-running operation was masterminded by one of Croatia's most infamous war criminals, General Ivan Andabak of the Croatian Defence Council . He was behind a plan to send millions of pounds worth of weaponry from the Balkans to Belfast.

Sitting on top of this shady world of secret gun-running operations and drug deals is the brazen face of Sinn Fein and its overseas fundraising. Of course, Sinn Fein claims it never sends a penny of the cash it receives (some £700,000 a year) from organisations like Noraid in America to their pals in the provos.

Along with the mass support of many in the Irish-American lobby, the US was a key landing stage for the provos who were tasked to make the organisation's first sorties into the world of drugs. Their gun-running activities in the States, where they hoped to get training and weapons from organised criminals and rogue members of the military, schooled them in the intricacies of the narcotics world. These contacts even led to an attempt to buy surface-to-air missiles.

Since the 1950s 'border campaign', weapons from the US have found their way in dribs and drabs to republican arms caches in Ireland. The guns came from sympathisers -- and just plain old greedy criminals -- from across the 50 states, including the cradle of US democracy, Philadelphia, and a Marine base in North Carolina.

Now the provos have moved south and began sniffing around for prospects in Latin America. The connection probably comes courtesy of their friends in ETA who, as reluctant Spanish speakers, could have acted as the initial go-between for the two organisations.

It was also through a pact signed with ETA in April 1972 that the IRA made links with a number of tiny, but logistically important, terrorist groups across the world. Through the ETA pact, the IRA made contact with the Breton Freedom Front, the Corsica Liberation Movement and the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers Party .

Access to these small pockets of leftist resistance were obviously highly useful to the IRA's European Unit, which terrorised the British armed forces across the continent in the 1980s and 1990s. Without this infrastructure, they would have been unable to plan terrorist activities in areas like Gibraltar and Germany, where they launched a mortar attack on a British army base in OsnabrŸck. There have also been small one-off arms deals in Amsterdam and Norway.

The case of the Bogota Three isn't the first time the provos have been linked to drugs, guns and Colombia. Last year, during the trial of three IRA men in Florida, details emerged of a huge arms cache in Colombia, which the provos wanted to ship to Ireland. Earlier, a convicted American drug-dealer called Robert Flint, who had flown cocaine out of Colombia for organised crime gangs, was arrested by Irish police in Galway. A contributor to Noraid, he claimed Seamus Moley, a senior IRA man, had spoken to him about getting arms out of Colombia.

In a complex plot, he intended to transport five tonnes of cocaine to Iran, where it was going to be used to pay for weapons from Poland. These would then be shipped to Ireland via Rotterdam in Holland.

Meanwhile, the Real IRA continues the search for a good old-fashioned rogue state to sponsor it, just like in the halcyon days of Gadaffi's patronage. Real IRA chiefs attended a series of meetings in Slovakia this year with agents -- or so they thought -- of Saddam Hussein. They weren't -- they were MI5 officers 'of an Arab appearance', and the three Real IRA men are now in a Slovak jail.

As one former IRA volunteer said last night: 'It's like the Masons. If there is one terrorist organisation that can do another a favour -- and get something back in return -- then they will. If you have your back against the wall, and you are a small band of volunteers taking on the might of the British army, do you really think you are going to ask too many questions if someone like Gadaffi is offering you a big pile of Semtex to get on and do the job with?'

Chronology of Gun-Running

Below is the chronology of IRA and Libyan co-operation.
This is part of a larger article and was taken from the FAIR ( Families Acting for Innocent Relatives )website. The full article called "The Libyan Connection is available here

1972: The weapons shipments from Libya began in 1972 with two cargoes containing an estimated 500 rifles, 500 pistols, 40,000 rounds of ammunition, an unknown amount of gelignite and TNT and assorted grenades, anti-tank mines, fuses and other equipment.

1973: A third shipment on board the 300-ton MV Claudia was intercepted off Helvick Head, Co Waterford, in March. On board the Naval Service found 250 rifles, 246 bayonets, 243 pistols, 850 magazines, 100 anti-tank mines, 500 grenades, gelignite, TNT, primers, electric fuses and 20,000 rounds of ammunition.

1977-78: A further seven tons of weapons, including an unknown number of RPG7 rocket-launchers, rifles, explosives, handguns and ammunition, reached the IRA from Libya. The route is unknown, but experts speculate it involved Islamic groups like the PLO.

1984: The Fenit, Co Kerry-based trawler, the Marita Ann, was intercepted by the Naval Service near the Skelligs, off the Kerry coast. There were seven tons of arms on board, including a .5 Browning machinegun, 300 rifles and 50,000 rounds of ammunition. These weapons had come from an organised crime gang in Boston.

1985: In August the 65ft fishing boat, the Casamara, delivered the first of three shipments of weapons from Libya, vessel looking for drug-traffickers in the Bay of Biscay. The largest shipment ever intercepted, it included 1,000 AK47 rifles, 10 DMZK .5 anti-aircraft machineguns, one million rounds of ammunition and one million mortar shells. again a present from Col Gadaffi. This first 10-ton shipment included 50 boxes containing rifles, pistols and rocket-launchers. In October the Casamara, skippered by the former Bray Travel director, Adrian Hopkins, delivered another 10 to 14 tons of weapons, including several 12.70 light machineguns.

1986: In April between 14 and 20 tons of weapons, including Semtex and at least two surface-to-air missiles, arrived. A larger vessel, the Villa, was used to deliver between 80 and 90 tons of weapons, including at least seven RPG rocket launchers, 10 SAM missiles and a large quantity of Semtex. A shipment of 17 rifles, two handguns, grenades, 70,000 rounds of ammunition and four drums of the chemical nitrobenzene (used for manufacturing explosives) was discovered in Amsterdam.

1987: In October some 150 tons of weaponry on board the Eksund was intercepted by a French naval fast-patrol, in the Bay of Biscay. The Eksund contained 150 tons of weapons including 1,000 AK47 rifles, 10 DMZK .5 antiaircraft machine guns, one million rounds of ammunition and one million mortar shells The weapons arrived in four shipments on two ships skippered by the former Bray Travel owner, Adrian Hopkins.

Senior security sources do not accept the suggestion inherent in the catch phrase "trust in rust" that the IRA's weapons will fall into disrepair in the near future.

Experience has shown that the IRA carefully prepares its weapons for storage, oiling all moving parts. Since the 1980s the organisation has also built damp proofed bunkers to store weapons securely. One senior source said a properly oiled AK47 assault rifle, of which the IRA may have more than 1,000, would be usable 100 years from now. Also, the estimated three tons of the Czech-manufactured Semtex-H explosive has a "shelf life" of 35 years and would be usable long after that. The Semtex is the most destructive part of the IRA arsenal. There has been no indication from the IRA that it intends disposing of any of its store of the plastic explosive.

BBC
Why no-one's reading the Libya dossier

Mark Devenport
BBC Northern Ireland political editor

There is a Middle Eastern country which, over the course of that last 30 years, has undeniably constituted "a serious and current" threat to the security interests of the UK.

Semtex from Libya was used in Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday bomb
An agent from that country's intelligence services was convicted in a court of murdering 259 passengers and crew in an airliner over British airspace in 1988.

No UN weapons investigators have been sent to that Middle Eastern country to try to uncover its arms or training camps.

However, it's well known that the same Middle Eastern country supplied four ship loads of arms and explosives to the most potent terrorist group operating within the UK during the 1980s.

Those explosives were used in a series of attacks in Britain and Ireland which claimed scores of lives. They included members of the security forces and civilians. Men, women and children.

The Middle Eastern country is, of course, Libya, not Iraq.

The group which benefited from Libyan assistance was the Provisional IRA, now on ceasefire.

A source with access to high grade intelligence told me there was no question that the Libyan arms had greatly enhanced the IRA's deadly force and transformed their ability to mount a wide range of operations.

The arms supplied ranged from Webley revolvers to Semtex high explosives.

Amongst the attacks carried out with Libyan Semtex, which the technical expert pointed to, were the Enniskillen bomb in 1987 which killed 11, the Ballygawley bus bombing in 1988 which killed eight soldiers, the mortar attack at Downing Street in 1991 when the IRA tried to wipe out John Major's Cabinet, and about 250 booby-trap bombings.

Gaddafi sent arms and cash to aid IRA with campaign
My source talked candidly about the evidence, unconcerned that the government might put him under pressure.

For one thing, it's all a matter of well documented history. For another, the worst kept secret of the IRA's Tripoli connection is that the Joint Intelligence Committee has no intention of compiling a dossier documenting the Libyan threat.

The UK is involved in action on the Libyan issue at the United Nations. But it isn't trying to build a coalition for military action against a sponsor of terror.

The UK did cooperate with Ronald Reagan's assault on Tripoli, which claimed the life of Muammar Gadaffi's adopted daughter.

But that took place in 1986, before the Lockerbie bombing and before most of the IRA attacks made possible by Libyan weaponry.

Indeed some believe that the attack on Tripoli may have acted as a spur to Colonel Gadaffi to step up his help for the IRA.

Instead of preparing for retribution, the UK's diplomats at the UN are championing the lifting of sanctions against Libya.

The matter will go to a vote on Friday. The British argument is that if the Libyans did the crime, then one of their agents, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, is now doing the time. He was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

'Last minute snag'

So, after years of painstaking negotiations which led to the agent's trial, the government believes it's time to bring Tripoli back from the diplomatic cold.

The plan to lift the sanctions against Libya hit a last minute snag, however, when Paris raised objections.

The French have threatened to use their Security Council veto largely because of their financial and diplomatic embarrassment.

French diplomats negotiated a compensation package for relatives of the 170 people killed when a French UTA airliner was brought down over Niger in 1989.

But that has been dwarfed by a more recent settlement reached by the US and British Governments for the Lockerbie bombing.

The French settled for $150,000 per family, whilst the Lockerbie package could mean that each victim's family will eventually receive up to $10 million.

Sanctions forced Libya to co-operate over Lockerbie
French families were angry at the disparity. But Lockerbie relatives were furious at the delay which Paris caused to their settlement.

However, on the eve of the crucial vote, the logjam appeared to have been removed when French diplomats agreed an improved deal.

Yet one group which has never been mentioned in relation to any discussions over compensation has been the relatives of those killed or maimed by the Libyan arms supplied to the IRA, and used to such deadly effect in Ireland and Britain.

The IRA connection has featured in international diplomacy to a degree.

As part of the negotiations which led to the UN sanctions being lifted, Libyan intelligence officials met their British counterparts and provided detailed information about the millions of pounds in cash and 120 tonnes of weaponry which they had given the IRA.

However, no diplomat has ever raised the question of compensation for the victims of the IRA's Libyan connection.

The talks about lifting the sanctions against Tripoli coincided with the years of the peace process in Ireland.

Some would argue that it might not have been politically expedient to give the litany of Provisional IRA attacks greater prominence on the world stage at that time.

£7,000 payment

Janet Hunter, whose brother Joseph McIlwaine was a soldier killed by the IRA in 1987, gasped when she heard the sums being talked about for compensating both the families of the French UTA airliner and the relatives of those on board the Pan Am Flight 103 brought down over Lockerbie.

She says all her family received after her brother's death was a £7,000 payment from the army.

Comparing the treatment given to other victims of terrorism elsewhere, she said: "We are disgusted we have been brushed under the carpet. No-one will stick their necks out for the likes of us."

The Eksund was seized with 150 tonnes of weaponry from Libya
Instead of holding out for compensation for the IRA victims, on Friday Britain's UN ambassador will push ahead with the move to lift sanctions.

He is no doubt trying to persuade his French counterpart that if he cannot vote in favour he should at least abstain.

The British embassy in Tripoli re-opened in 1999 after 15 years in which diplomatic relations were severed.

British firms are doing business in Libya and British diplomats have recently been quoted as viewing Colonel Gaddaffi as "a man we can talk to" and someone who is now "on the right side in the war against terror".

It's just that no-one has yet explained that to Janet Hunter, or the other relatives of victims of the IRA's Libyan connection.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3099746.stm

'Libya and the International Community’
http://www.britain-info.org/africa/xq/asp/SarticleType.1/Article_ID.2520/qx/articles_show.htm

Edited transcript of an interview given by FCO Minister Mike O’Brien, to the Today program, Radio Four in Libya, 7 August 2002

MR O’BRIEN:
Well a Libya which no longer supports terrorism is of course very much in Britain’s interest. And our hardheaded judgement all along has been that we’re more likely to achieve that by encouraging rather than isolating Libya. And it’s more likely that Libya will move away from terrorism if it’s part of the international community and that indeed is why I’m meeting Colonel Gadaffi this morning.

On Lockerbie as your package demonstrated a Libyan official was handed over for trial and is now in a Scottish prison. Justice to some extent has been done. And an isolated Libya wouldn’t have done that. That’s taken four years. It’s been a long time, but we’ve made some progress. So further progress on issues of concern like Al Qa’ida, international terrorism, is possible. It’s a long haul but as I say our judgement is that if we encourage and establish relations with (indistinct) it’s more likely to produce results.

INTERVIEWER:
Until very recently Libya has been supplying arms to the IRA and certainly was the country that enabled the IRA to become the effective terrorist organisation it became. And yet here we are sitting down and supping with the Devil.

MR O’BRIEN:
Well there was a past in which Libya offered some support to the IRA and indeed a number of other terrorist organisations across the world. Our assessment is at the moment they have stopped doing that. That the Libyans recognise that their long-term interests are by being part rather than separate from the international community.

There are still UN resolutions that they have to comply with although the sanctions against them have been suspended for the moment. Legal terms have been lifted and so the Libyans want the sanctions officially lifted so they can enter the international community.

What they have to do is renounce terrorism, accept the responsibility for al-Megrahi and ensure that they pay compensation to the victims of Lockerbie and when they comply with the conditions of the UN, the UN will no doubt then be a position to bring them back in to the international community.

INTERVIEWER:
We are dealing with a leader who has been and may still be ‘a rogue state’ in the words of the Americans. And yet in the case of Iraq, we’re proposing to support America in launching an attack to depose its leader. Where’s the difference?

MR O’BRIEN:
Well let, let’s set out the difference. Gadaffi was indeed involved in the past in terrorism, but the evidence is now that he’s not been involved in terrorism for some years. He’s not threatening his neighbours. We still have criticisms of Libya on human rights grounds and aspects of its foreign policy. But Libya is moving away from being an outlaw, a pariah state towards engagement with the West and also the rest of the international community and complying with international law. But by contrast, Saddam Hussein murdered his people with poison gas, threatens his neighbours, he’s breaching 23 out of 27 UN resolutions. He’s moving away from compliance with international law. He won’t allow the inspectors of the UN in to Iraq. So one is moving towards compliance, Gadaffi, and the other is moving away from compliance.

INTERVIEWER:
That’s a very different interpretation from what Washington puts on it. Donald Rumsfeld himself talks about Libya being one of the axis of evil countries. John Bolton, the Under Secretary of State says that Libya is a rogue state - that’s what he said just a few weeks ago.

MR O’BRIEN:
Yes what he was talking about wasn’t so much support for international terrorism but he wants to ensure that Libya does not develop weapons of mass destruction in, in the future.

And indeed one of the messages that I’ll be putting to Colonel Gadaffi this morning when I see him is that we need to get them to sign up to international conventions on chemical weapons and other issues which they have indicated that they’re interested in doing. So there’s the chemical weapons’ convention, an additional protocol on inspection and also a number of other international codes of conduct against weapons of mass destruction and we are pressing them to sign up. What the Libyans are saying is that they are interested in complying with international law. What Iraq by contrast is saying is that it’s not complying with international law.

INTERVIEWER:
Well on the contrary, Iraq is trying to get a dialogue going and what we are saying, what the United States is saying, is forget the dialogue we’re going to bomb you.

MR O’BRIEN:
Well no decision has been taken to launch military action on Iraq and it is not imminent nor inevitable and (the Government) has been very clear that an attack on Iraq is not imminent. Nobody of course wants war for the sake of it.

We understand that there are issues in relation to Iraq, in particular we need to make sure that the inspectors go in and it the ball is now in Saddam Hussein’s court. He must ensure that the inspectors go in to Iraq and that international law is complied with. If international law is complied with of course the position will then be very different.

INTERVIEWER:
Well that’s not the message you get from Washington is it? I spoke to John Bolton himself. He said what they’re concerned with is regime change come what may.

MR O’BRIEN:
Well let me put our position quite clearly. That is that whilst regime change might well be desirable, I don’t know anyone in Britain who thinks that they want to see Saddam Hussein remain there, our objective is clear. It is that we want to see the inspectors in Iraq so that with, with the full right to inspect where they need to so that there is no threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq against its neighbours and indeed other people throughout the world.

INTERVIEWER:
Regime change is not therefore inevitable from our point of view?

MR O’BRIEN:
Well what is important is that we focus on the issue of getting the inspectors in and we make sure that the threat of weapons of mass destruction is dealt with.