Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, has denied that British commercial relations with Col Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya held back compensation demands for people killed or injured by IRA weapons supplied by Tripoli. Straw said compensation for victims of weapons supplied by Gaddafi’s regime to the IRA was “not an active issue” at the time of the 2003 discussions with the then Libyan leader. Straw said it would be “cruel” to keep pursuing compensation for victims with the Libyan state in disintegration and the country at war with itself. Sylvia Hermon, the independent unionist MP for North Down, challenged Straw to ask the current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to support the IRA victims’ campaign for compensation from Libya. Neither the Gaddafi regime nor the current administration in Tripoli has agreed to any compensation for hundreds of IRA victims killed or injured by Libya-supplied semtex explosives and other weapons.

Source: The Guardian October 26, 2016 12:38 UTC