Gozo used as arms transit point for Libya and the IRA in 1985: in The Telegraph today
My dad went to Gozo and all I got was this lousy Gaddafi gun
While the Malta Labour Party and its people in government crawled to Gaddafi, he used Gozo (and the mainland) as a transit point for arms and Semtex shipments to the IRA.
Time to slam the door in his face, Dr Gonzi, don’t you think?
In The Telegraph, today:
LIBYAN ARMS HELPED THE IRA TO WAGE WAR
By Toby Harnden
For almost 25 years, virtually every bomb constructed by the Provisional IRA and the groups that splintered off it has contained Semtex from a Libyan shipment unloaded at an Irish pier in 1986.
The arrangements for the biggest arms consignment ever received by the IRA had been made between Thomas “Slab” Murphy, a 36–year–old pig farmer from South Armagh, and Nasser Ali Ashour, a diplomat and Libyan intelligence officer.
Ashour, five years older than Murphy, was believed by MI6 to have been an acolyte of Moussa Koussa, who later became Col Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence chief. It took 30 Libyans two nights in October 1986 to load the Villa, a converted Swedish oil rig replenisher, with 80 tons of arms.
The cargo, landed near Clogga Strand, Co Wicklow, included seven rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), 10 surface–to–air (SAM) missiles and, most significantly, a ton of Semtex–H plastic explosive.
Manufactured at Pardubice, 90 miles from Prague, more than 1,000 tons of Semtex had been exported to Libya from communist Czechoslovakia.
Odourless and not detectable by X–rays, Semtex does not explode even when exposed to a naked flame. When used with a detonator, however, it can produce a blast many times more powerful than a fertiliser–based explosive. The Villa shipment was to transform the IRA’s ability to wage war against the British state.
Col Gaddafi had long sought to boost his revolutionary credentials by assisting terrorist groups bent on destabilising Western governments. His determination to help the IRA intensified when the British allowed bases at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire to be used by the American F–111s that bombed Tripoli in April 1986.
Murphy had been among the IRA men who trained in Libya in the 1970s. He was chosen by Joe Cahill, a veteran IRA leader who had been arrested in 1973 on board the Claudia with a cargo of Libyan arms, to re–establish contacts with the Gaddafi regime.
The first vessel used was the Casamara, a British–registered 65ft yacht, that set sail from Malta in August 6 1985. Its 10–ton cargo was taken on board during a rendezvous with the Libyan ship Samra Africa off the Mediterranean island of Gozo.
That cargo yielded 300 boxes of weaponry including AK–47s, Taurus automatic pistols from Brazil, seven Soviet–made RPG–7s and three Russian DShK 12.7mm heavy machineguns.
Another shipment, again picking up 10 tons of arms off Gozo and landing them at Clogga Strand, was arranged for October 1985.
The following year, Murphy made at least seven trips to the Mediterranean to meet Libyan officials.
On April 28 1986, he flew to Athens on a false passport to see three senior IRA men. Murphy boarded another plane the next day for a meeting with Ashour. Sitting on a boat off a Greek island, they discussed a third shipment of 14 tons, later landed at Clogga Strand.
For the fourth shipment, a new vessel, the Villa, was chosen. It was too large to anchor off Clogga Strand so its cargo was landed at nearby Roadstone Pier.
Adrian Hopkins, a Wicklow man who was the boat skipper for all four shipments, told the French police: “The delivery of the load went off smoothly. On land there were two trucks which brought the cargo to another place unknown to me. Tom told me several times that nothing would be circulated until we had delivered the whole stock.”
Hopkins said he was paid $500,000 given to him in plastic bags handed over in the White Horse pub in north Dublin.
Many of the arms contained in the Libyan shipments were of little practical use for the predominantly urban campaign the IRA was fighting. Murphy was intent on bringing down British helicopters near his border farm but the size and complexity of the Libyan anti–aircraft weapons meant this was never achieved.
The fifth shipment was to be even bigger and Murphy was keen to show the IRA’s gratitude. “At the preparatory meetings with Tom, the latter insisted I should buy a German shepherd dog and offer it to Nasser from Joe Cahill,” Hopkins said.
Murphy also authorised the purchase of a double bed, a large clock and two cans of olive oil, which were picked up at a factory near Valletta, as gifts for Nasser. The gifts, including the dog, were transported to Tripoli on board the Eksund, an ageing 237–ton freighter.
Fifty Libyan soldiers were on the jetty at Tripoli to help load 130 tons of weaponry over two nights. Hopkins later recalled: “According to the agreed code, I transmitted a message to Tom via a shipping company in London. I used the code word Stockholm which indicated the unloading date, October 29 1987.”
Murphy had been given the code name “Halliday” while Hopkins was “Pender”. But as the Eksund left Libya, it was being monitored by MI6 and the French intelligence services and tracked by a Royal Navy hunter–killer submarine.
When the crew saw a spotter plane overhead as the vessel was five miles off Roscoff, Hopkins messaged Murphy: “Pender to Halliday. The unloading of cargo date plus 17.” This was the prearranged code stating that the Eksund and its cargo were about to be scuttled.
Two tons of Semtex, 1,000 Romanianmade AK–47s, 1,000 mortars, 600 Soviet F1 grenades, 120 RPG–7s, 20 SAM–7s, 10 DShKs, 2,000 electric detonators, 4,700 fuses and more than a million rounds of ammunition were found in the hold of the Eksund. Hopkins and four IRA men were arrested, convicted and jailed.
Murphy flew into Split in Yugoslavia to meet Ashour on May 28 1989, to discuss more shipments but it was eventually judged too risky to attempt them.
One of his fomer allies, the IRA quartermaster Michael McKevitt (since convicted of IRA offences) defected to the Real IRA in 1997, taking large amounts of Semtex and other IRA weaponry.
The IRA’s Libyan connection was detailed in Toby Harnden’s book Bandit Country: the IRA and South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton 1999)
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Here’s the link to the report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/8425593/Libyan-arms-helped-the-IRA-to-wage-war.html
Gaddafi’s emissary offers peace – comment on timesofmalta.com
Marlene F-Hills
I hope that PM Gonzi takes the hand of mediation and possible peace offered to him by these Libyan emissaries as should the allied coalition and the other countries they are visiting and all make sure that In a future democracy for Libya,elements from both sides should be represented once Gaddafi goes.
Meanwhile, America’s satellite Israel is DEMANDING that the United Nations rescind the finding of its guilt of war crimes in its 23 days of bombardment of Gaza tand hundreds killed wo years ago and Benyamin Netanyahu,the Israeli prime minister said he wants to “toss the report into the trash can of history” . The Times of London page 28
Malta should mind its own business – a comment by a university professor, posted on timesofmalta.com:
“Godfrey Pirotta
…people like you keep saying the same thing over and over again. Simon Busuttil did much the same thing. When I challenged him in this newspaper to say what we should do he did not come up with anything concrete. Just more words. So repeating ad nuaesum the same vague statements is practically useless. So please tell us what we should do in practical terms. Shall we invade Libya and oust Gaddafi? What?
It seems to me that you think, like many others that changing our policy of neutrality as enshrined in the Constitution will at a stroke bring down the Libyan regime or other tyrannical regimes in the world. Sorry but people like you need to get into the real world and understand that this studio-flat sized “country” adopted neutrality so that it can make the choices it thinks fit and not let others make them for it. Libya is not the only country at this very moment experiencing uprisings and the great powers have all made their own choice where to intervene. So why do you want to deprive this little rock from making its own decisions? So hard to understand?”
“Nuauseum”. Dan il-KRETIN huwa professor? Makes me want to tie a green band with a slogan on my forehead and blow myself up in the quadrangle.
Whilst I do not question the veracity of the article in The Telegraph how come these facts are coming out in the open 25 years later? So many country leaders knew about Gaddafi’s tactics and no one said anything – how come?
[Daphne – They didn’t just come out into the open now, Etil. EVERYONE knew that Gaddafi sponsored the IRA. That was one of the UK’s big beefs with him. People in Malta – yourself included, apparently – chose not to know this because otherwise it would have had to be squared with our friendly relationship with a terrorist. It’s been mentioned several times on this website alone. The facts are once again considered topical – hence the story – because of what is happening in Libya now.]
I’m not impressed by this report . “…..off the Island of Gozo” is not Gozo. Was this transshipment done with the MLP’s administration approval in our territorial waters?
I hope you are not scandalised with the purchase of two cans of olive oil from Malta in 1995.
[Daphne – John, if the cargo was loaded right out at sea, the distinction wouldn’t have been made between the two islands. When you are way out at sea, Malta and Gozo are equally distant from you. ‘Off Gozo’ tells you that it was close to shore, and we’re not speaking of ‘territorial waters’ here but the actual coast. Official government approval? We’re never going to get a Yes or a No on that one. I think, however, that it can be safely assumed that there was Maltese involvement, which made it possible to get this done: crooked businessmen, crooked politicians, or crooked businessman-politicians. It’s not as though we had a shortage of any of those. Remember that in 1985 the coast was tightly patrolled and boats would head for port/a marina before sundown – it was the law – or find a patrol boat with soldiers on board breathing down their neck.]
I meant 1985 not 1995
The coast was not that tightly patrolled in 1985.How many sea worthy patrol boats did we have, for? But there was the possibility of such things to happen.
Smuggling in those years was the order of the day: video players, colour TV sets, pasta, melons, small arms, cigarettes; you name it.
[Daphne – That is exactly what I am saying, John. That smuggling was the order of the day, but we all knew that the smugglers were protected and that the smuggling was semi-official. Hence the famous story of Karmenu Vella and Johnny Dalli. Cargoes of arms would not have been loaded off Gozo unless the situation was considered relatively safe, and I don’t mean safe because there were insufficient patrol boats. The large yacht which picked up the cargo could have easily sailed into Libyan territorial waters to do it, or even all the way to Tripoli, which would have been no problem at all. But when the risks of loading off Gozo from a vessel coming in from Tripoli were calculated against the relatively small bother of sailing to Tripoli, the decision was taken to load off Gozo. That tells you they considered the risk to be negligible or nonexistent. Here you see the classic cynicism of a sociopath like Muammar Gaddafi, who probably delighted in embroiling Malta in arms transshipments for the IRA, whether Malta knew about it or not. I would say he derived more pleasure from doing it without Mintoff’s and Karmenu MB’s knowledge while smiling at them and treating them like his serfs. But I would be very, very surprised to learn that nobody in the Maltese government was aware of what was going on, and perhaps even taking a cut. The government of Malta at the time was entrenched in corruption and surrounded by criminals the likes of whom wouldn’t have shrunk away from supplying arms to terrorists, not when they didn’t shrink away from murdering an accountant and chucking his dismembered body into a well, for instance.]
Please note that I did not mention marijuana in my list – that was being grown on the roundabouts full of weeds.
These same smuggling routes were, until recently it appears, still being used for cigarettes. Chinese cigarettes smuggled in to Ireland via Tripoli and Malta.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/old-ira-gun-routes-used-to-smuggle-in-cigarettes-1855286.html
[Daphne – Yes, and one of the men implicated around 12 years ago in this cigarette smuggling – the proceeds went to the IRA, incidentally – is a Maltese crook called Ronald Agius. He spent some time in prison in Belgium in 1999 on cigarette-smuggling related charges. Now he lives in Tripoli – natch – and posts comments on timesofmalta.com claiming that there is no violence and that this is all a conspiracy to cheat Gaddafi of what is rightly his. Maltese crooks: first Soho. Now Tripoli.]
Very well said, Daphne. They all follow that pattern; first it’s Soho, then it’s Tripoli.
All this story tells me is that Malta was used as a transit point. It was ideal for this no matter what who was in government. If the British navy were still moored at Grand Harbour I would assume Gaddafi would have tried to bomb it.
I’m interested more in how this mess is going to be resolved quickly for the benefit of the Libyan people. The situation is still fluid:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ARTICLES/67684/michael-ohanlon/winning-ugly-in-libya?page=show
It should also be pointed out here that the use of these imported explosives continues today. This weekend a young Catholic police officer was blown up and killed by a bomb under his car outside his own home.
That’s the point made in the introductory paragraph of the Telegraph article, isn’t it?
Aren’t our politicians worried that the world knows about this? Or do they think that it is going to help tourism?
Wonder how many more skeletons are still lurking in our collective cupboard? We have been under Libya’s thumb since 1971 (thanks, Dom) and going by the way our politicians have been behaving, we are still there, welcoming the Libyan envoy with open arms.
I think Gaddafi must have a collection of dirty linen the only mention of which makes our politicians break into a cold sweat.
Piling on the pressure :
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Video-Four-More-Tornado-Fighter-Planes-Will-Be-Based-At-Italy-To-Deploy-To-Libya-David-Cameron/Article/201104115966007?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15966007_Video%3A_Four_More_Tornado_Fighter_Planes_Will_Be_Based_At_Italy_To_Deploy_To_Libya%2C_David_Cameron
Some years back an English friend came to Malta on his third visit, and on meeting me the next day he told me how baffled he was by the support we Maltese had for the IRA.
I asked him what drew him to this conclusion, and he said that as he walked through the arrivals lounge the day before he saw a lot of people waiting at arrivals with IRA placards. I had to inquire and I’m so glad I did.
He was right, lots of people were waiting at the arrivals lounge with IRA placards: fans of Ira Losco waiting for her to come back from the Eurovision song festival.
One hopes that Dr Gonzi will not be tempted to do a ‘Neville Chamberlain’ when his slimey emissary shows up..
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110404/local/gaddafi-envoy-arrives-in-malta-as-rebels-reject-proposals
Transitional National Council spokesman Shamseddin Abdulmelah: “Gaddafi and his sons have to leave before any diplomatic negotiations can take place”.
Simples.
I did not say I did not know that Gaddafi sponsored the IRA – what I meant was why is it that the ‘world leaders’ did not do anything about it.
[Daphne – For crying out loud, Etil. Of course they did. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher organised the death through bombing of Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, when these arms shipments were being made. But the prime minister of the island where the arms cargoes were loaded tipped him off. Then, after the terrorism was taken up a notch two years later with the Lockerbie bombing, there were tough sanctions for years. That’s why Malta was the through-port for Libya. Please don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten all this. The sanctions were lifted after long negotiations which led to Gaddafi divesting himself of all his Weapons of Mass Destruction build-up in a supervised programme. This was the condition on which he was accepted into the international ‘fold’. It’s a good thing that was done, because imagine if he had WMD now. Gaddafi resented being made to shed his WMD and blamed Musa Kusa for persuading him to do so, hence the deteriorating relationship between them over the last few years.]
No doubt we are going to read more about these articles that are meant to discredit Malta – and anyway who in the first place supplied the arms to Gaddafi ? Why do you always have to belittle and come to certain conclusions when people who are trying to reason out things, except of course if they agree with you.
[Daphne – Because my patience wears completely thin in situations like this, Etil. I do not do blind loyalty and patriotism and all that Maltese version of the Little Englander and US redneck stuff. It is not newspaper articles which ‘discredit Malta’ because nobody has any interest in ‘discrediting Malta’. It’s not as though editors and newsrooms sit down for a morning debriefing and say ‘What do we have today that can discredit that island – you know, what’s it called – ah yes, Malta.’ It’s Malta’s own behaviour over the years that has severely discredited us – yes, us, because Malta is so tiny that all Maltese come under suspicion when anything is wrong – over the decades. I was very well aware of this while it was happening from the late 1970s onwards and now, reading back through these newspaper stories, I am more than shocked when everything falls into place through hindsight. Malta was literally used and abused by Gaddafi’s regime and the Maltese government let him do it in exchange for money and cheap oil. So quite frankly, the ‘qahba ta’ Gaddafi’ moniker fits Malta. Do you remember those regular reports in The Times (Malta) of Libyan students at Ta’ Giorni found hanging in their quarters, and how we thought – “Goodness, these Libyans are really depressive and prone to suicide.” Well, now we know better, don’t we. The trouble is that people in Malta did not read the international press in the late 1970s and 1980s, and there was no internet. So only around 1% of the Maltese population, if that, knew the sort of coverage Malta was getting in the world’s top newspapers. There was one story in the New York Times or the Washington Post – I can’t remember and have no time to find out right now – which described in detail how those who assassinated Libyan dissidents were paid: they were asked to go to the Libyan embassy in Malta with a picture of the dead man and collect their cash.]
Let us not be hypocrites and call a spade a spade. The era of dictators is ending and one by one they will all get what they deserve. In conclusion I do hope that Gaddafi and his family leave Libya forever and maybe the Libyan people can find the peace and serenity they so rightly deserve.
Here’s the article. It was in the New York Times:
There Sits a State Terrorist
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/20/opinion/there-sits-a-state-terrorist.html?scp=193&sq=malta&st=nyt
Colonel Qaddafi of Libya has taught us a good deal in his bungled attempt to reach into Egypt to kill a political opponent. The going rate for murder among British and Maltese contractors is $250,000, plus $150,000 to the Egyptian locals for dirty work. The fee is payable on receipt, at the Libyan Embassy in Malta, of a clear snapshot of the dead victim. That evidence then becomes the basis for broadcast boasts that patriotic ”suicide squads” have eliminated yet another infidel or Zionist tool.
The Omagh bomb that killed a policemen late last week was made with Semtex from that original consignment that Libya delivered to the IRA.
The Semtex is still around, Gaddafi is still in power and Malta still treads carefully around the wrong people. That is why stories like these are still relevant.