IRA victims killed with Libyan semtex to get £2bn in compensation from Colonel Gaddafi

Compensation: Colonel Gaddafi will pay £2bn to IRA victims killed with bombs made of semtex

Colonel Gaddafi is to pay as much as £2billion in compensation for IRA terrorism carried out with explosives supplied by Libya, it emerged today.



The agreement follows nine months of talks in Tripoli involving representatives of families and British officials.



It will deliver payments to the families of victims killed in a series of republican bombings using Semtex shipped from Libya in the 1980s.



Among attacks carried out with the imported plastic explosive were the Harrods bombing of 1983, which killed six amid Christmas shopping crowds, and the Enniskillen atrocity of 1987 that left 11 dead during a Remembrance Day service.



It was also used by the Real IRA splinter group in the Omagh bombing in August 1998, killing 29 and injuring 220.



And Libyan semtex was employed in the 1989 Lockerbie airline bombing that left 270 dead.



Libya has already paid £5 million to each of the families of victims aboard Pan Am Flight 103.



Gordon Brown set up a Foreign Office unit in Tripoli last September - less than three weeks after Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from jail in Scotland - to help lawyers working for families secure compensation.



The cash for families is expected to go alongside a trade deal which will seal Libya's reconciliation with Britain and open the door for British companies to make high profits from Libyan oil and other assets.



Around £800 million of the compensation is likely to go to 147 families who have been pressing Libya to acknowledge its role.



However, Colonel Gaddafi is not expected to accept liability for specific bombings and so other victims are likely to be able to claim.



The Foreign Office said today: 'The Government is sympathetic to the suffering of the victims and their legitimate attempts to seek redress.



'We believe success is best achieved by direct contacts, which we have helped establish, between the campaign and the Libyan authorities.'



A spokesman added: 'With Government support the Campaign has been able to make initial contacts, develop relations and enter into exploratory discussions with the Libyan authorities. The campaign is a private one and it would be inappropriate to elaborate on what remain sensitive and confidential discussions.'

Carnage: The Harrods bombing of 1983 killed six shoppers at the famous London store. The IRA bomb used in the attack contained semtex



