Victims have '˜productive' Met Police meeting over Libya-IRA collusion arrests

Victims of IRA terrorism say they have had a very productive meeting with the Metropolitan Police in a bid to seek arrests over Libya-IRA collusion.
Jonathan Ganesh, Willie Frazer and Susanne Dodd outside New Scotland Yard before the meetingJonathan Ganesh, Willie Frazer and Susanne Dodd outside New Scotland Yard before the meeting
Jonathan Ganesh, Willie Frazer and Susanne Dodd outside New Scotland Yard before the meeting

The delegation included victims’ campaigners Willie Frazer and Barrie Halliday from south Armagh group FAIR, London lawyer Matt Jury, who is campaigning for compensation for Libya-IRA victims, Docklands victims’ spokesman Jonathan Ganesh and Susanne Dodd, whose father was a Metropolitan Police inspector who died in the IRA Harrods bomb of 1983.

They met senior Metropolitan anti-terror officers for over an hour-and-a-half at New Scotland Yard on Wednesday.

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“It was a very productive meeting,” Mr Frazer said. “Obviously we now have quite a bit of work to do and so do they.”

The aim of the investigation, he said, is to see arrests of Gaddafi regime officials and senior IRA members who worked together to promote bloody terrorist attacks across the UK.

“We want those people arrested – Libyans and republicans,” he said. “The ones who acted for Libya and the ones who acted for the IRA. The focus is on the dealings between the two.”

His list of Libyans includes three senior members of the Gaddafi regime who were this week exposed as living freely in England, but also several others living in the Middle East.

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The Metropolitan Police has jurisdiction over international terrorism in a way the RUC and PSNI did not, the group has found.

“We highlighted how Libya’s IRA support aided republican terrorists in carrying out a campaign of extreme violence the legacy of which exists to this day. We don’t want to say too much at this point but we can confirm the meeting was productive, it was worthwhile, and we were impressed at the level of cooperation we received. We certainly plan on having further meetings in the very near future.”

This week UK news website Buzzfeed revealed that three of Colonel Gaddafi’s former henchmen have been found living in Britain. They allegedly fled Libya with millions of pounds in state assets following the dictator’s removal from power in 2011.

The trio are said to have been given safe haven in the UK despite being accused of laundering their fortunes through British banks and property deals.

Libyan investigators claim that they are among scores of regime figures suspected of hiding stolen assets worth $10bn in Britain – and that UK authorities have failed to help them investigate.

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