Saturday Sept 28th and Oct 5th at 2pm, RTÉ Radio 1
On June 11th 1972 Colonel Gaddafi spoke live on Libyan National Radio making an announcement in Arabic:
“We support the revolutionaries of Ireland, who oppose Britain and who are motivated by nationalism and religion. There are arms and there is support for the revolutionaries of Ireland. We have decided to create a problem for Britain and to drive a thorn in her side so as to make life difficult. She will pay dearly.”
This was the first indication Gaddafi was prepared to arm the Provisional IRA. And whilst history and British and Irish Government documents record that Gaddafi donated five shipments of weapons to the IRA, beginning in 1973, the very first shipment, a year earlier in 1972, was never recorded – a mission that very few know about – a story that has been largely untold, until now.
In the late summer of 1972, IRA Director of Munitions, Clare man Denis McInerney, was summoned to the Libyan Embassy in London where he was told Colonel Muammar Gaddafi wished to donate 10 tonnes of weapons, 4 shipments, to the IRA. However, the IRA would have to make their own arrangements for the transportation of the weapons from Libya, to Ireland.
The IRA quickly set to work and by October 1972 a plan was put in place. An airplane had been sourced, along with two pilots and in early November 1972, that plane landed into Tripoli where Denis McInerney was waiting.
Gadaffi’s very first gift of weapons to the IRA comprised of 25 RPG7 rocket launchers and 496 warheads. This was the first time in history the IRA received a cache of modern weapons. On November 15th, 1972, those weapons landed into Ireland. Initially due to land at Kerry’s Farranfore airport, the plane had to make a last minute landing at Shannon airport. Over the course of the following evening, the weapons were then smuggled out of Shannon Airport to arms dumps scattered around the surrounding countryside.
After a training camp was held, a plan for the very first use of these rockets was put in place and on Tuesday, November 28th 1972, ten attacks took place across Northern Ireland with 15 warheads fired. The first victim to be killed by these rockets was RUC Constable Robert Keys, a 55yr old father of six who was just finishing up his night shift at Belleek RUC station in Co. Fermanagh when it came under fire at 9.35am that Tuesday morning. Robert was instantly killed – the first victim of Gadaffi’s gift of weapons to the IRA. In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, many others across Northern Ireland were injured, maimed or killed by these weapons.
More than fifty years after all of this took place, RTÉ Documentary On One: First Consignment tells a story that has never been told before. It meets with some of those involved in this operation, and with the Keys family whose father Robert became the first victim killed by these Russian made, Libyan funded weapons that Colonel Gaddafi gifted to the IRA.
Narrated by Liam O’Brien and Conor Keane
Produced by Liam O’Brien.
