Gaddafi And The I.R.A.

Documentary about Muammar Gaddafi and his support for the Provisional IRA. This Documentary follows him and his support for the IRA and could be arming newly formed militant Irish Republican Groups in Northern Ireland. – Feburary 2011  The source of IRA arms in the 1970s was Libya, whose leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, sympathised with their campaign.The first Libyan arms donation to the IRA occurred in 1972–1973, following visits by Joe Cahill to Libya. In early 1973, the Government of the Republic of Ireland received intelligence that the vessel Claudia was carrying a shipment of weapons, and placed the ship under surveillance on 27 March. On 28 March, three Irish Naval Service patrol vessels intercepted the Claudia in Irish territorial waters near Helvick Head, County Waterford, seizing five tonnes of Libyan arms and ammunition found on board. The weapons seized included 250 Soviet-made small arms, 240 rifles, anti-tank mines and other explosives. Cahill was found and arrested on board. It is estimated that three shipments of weapons of similar size and makeup did get through to the IRA during the same time period. Moloney reports that the early Libyan arms shipments furnished the IRA with its first RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and that Gaddafi also donated three to five million US dollars at this time. However contact with the Libyan government was broken off in 1976.

Contact with Libya was restored in the aftermath of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which was said to have impressed Gadaffi. In the 1980s, the IRA secured larger quantities of weapons and explosives from Gaddafi’s Libya — enough to supply at least two infantry battalions. These shipments were as a direct result of Gaddafi’s desire to strike at the British Government for their support and assistance during the US Air Force’s bombing attacks on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. The USAF planes involved in the bombings had taken off from British bases on 14 April 1986. 60 Libyans died in the attack. This second major Libyan contribution to the IRA came in 1986–1987.                                                                                    The arms shipments included:                                                                      9mm Browning, Taurus, Glock and Beretta handguns