Calls for the Home Secretary to press for one of Colonel Gaddafi’s key lieutenants to be extradited 

Lawyers for victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism have called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to press for the extradition of one of Colonel Gaddafi’s key lieutenants.

Abdullah al-Senussi, 68, who is in a Libyan jail alongside a fellow Lockerbie bomb suspect, is thought to be the mastermind behind the attack which blew up the New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 and killed all 249 on board in 1988. 

But the former spy chief is also linked to supplying the IRA with Semtex explosive, which was used in more than 250 bombings.

Now lawyers for IRA victims and their families have written to Ms Patel saying the failure to prosecute anyone in the Gaddafi regime over the attacks, which maimed or murdered around 3,500 British victims, was a ‘stain on the UK’s international reputation’.

Matthew Jury, of McCue and Partners, lawyers for the victims, wrote to the Home Secretary on Friday calling for al-Senussi’s extradition, in a letter seen by The Mail on Sunday.

Aileen Quinton, whose 72-year-old mother Alberta was killed by a 1987 IRA Semtex bomb in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday, said: ‘Gaddafi’s regime has many victims in Libya and throughout the world and I pray the UK Government and Libya does not make the mistake of giving up on real justice for us.’

Al-Senussi is being held in a Tripoli jail alongside Abu Agila Mohammad Masud and has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.